LIBRARY 

OF   THK 

University  of  California. 

Received        /V>^2^  .  f^QQ..- 

Accession  No.yd^ ^  J/,(^^  .    Class  No.    ??^e. 


//ir3  7 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/bibleitsinfluencOOherbrich 


i.liSUAUX 


trNIVEKSl'i'V    OF 


\T  JT?f>l?\"TA 


THi;    Ml^I<E 


AHD 


i         I 


THE   REPUBLIC 


«> 


By    MARIE    HERBERT. 


"The  tirst  principles  of  our  goverument  are  the  truths  of  Divine  Rewel&tiou."—  l^Vedsifer 
"England  made Shakspeare,  and  the  Bible  made  England."— FzW^r/Zw^c?, 


SAN    FRANCISCO  : 
Cubery  &   Company,  Publishers,  414  Market  Street,  below  Sansome. 

187P. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  CongresB,  in  the  year  1876,  by   VV.  H.  BARTON,  in  the  office 
of  the  Libraiittu  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


THE   BIBLE; 


Its  Influence;    its  Relations  to  Republican  Govern- 
ment,   AND    ITS    Necessity  as  a  Text-Book 
of  Ethics  in  the  Public  Schools. 


LIBEARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

CALIFORNIA,  j; 

By   MARIE    HERBERT. 


'  England  made  Shakspeare,  and  the  Bible  made  'Eax^^xl^:'— Victor  Hugo. 

'The  first  principles  of  our  government  are  the  truths  of  Divine  Revelation."— /f'/^i/zr. 


SAN  FRANCISCO  : 
Cubary  A  Company,  Publishers,  414  Markat  Street,  b^low  Sansome. 

1876. 


TO 

The  American  People,  into  whose  keeping  has  been  placed  the  most 
sacred  trusts  of  conscience  and  of  government,  and  upon 
whose  virtue  and  wisdom  is  depending  the  suc- 
cessful solution  of  the  great  problem 
of  popular  sovereignty, 

I  dedicate  this  humble  volume,  as  a  token  of  my  love  of  country  and  of  the 
rights  of  men. 

THE  AUTHOE. 

mi 


ttx^ 


:&BPT7'Ar'Tr 


E  RRATA 


Paj^e  IQ,  third  line,  the  "purely  spiritual  and  purely  divine"  should  read  "purely 
ppirituHl,  the  purely  divine."  Same  page,  eleventh  line,  "Lossing"  should  read  "Lessiug." 
In  the  fourteenth  line,  ••  could  "  should  read  "  would." 

On  payie  12,  last  line,  "  present  hour  of  civilization  have  struck  centuries  ago  "  should 
read  "  present  hour  of  civilization  may  llien  have  struck  centuries  ago." 

On  page  32,  eighth  line,  "  Do  their  fires  never  die  ow(  with"  should  read,  "  Do  their  fires 
never  die  only  with." 

On  page  31),  second  line,  "  conflict  of  all  certainty  oi  ideas  "  ghould  read,  "  conflict  of  all 
ages,  certainly  of  ideas." 

On  page  42,  thirtieth  line,  "  provided  for  by  their  sect  "  should  read,  "  provided  for  by 
this  sect." 

On  page  43,  thirtieth  line,  "  demagogues,  the  '  honest,  capable,'  "  etc,  should  read 
"  demagogues,  of  the  '  honest,  capable.'  " 

On  page  47,  thirteenth  line,  "  Herot^litus  "  should  read  "  Heraclitus." 

On  page  49,  twenty-fifth  line,  "  the  eternal  flow  "  should  read  "  the  eternal  flux." 

Ou  page  52,  twelfth  line,  "Lossing"  should  read  "L«ssing."  Twenty -seventh  line, 
"  christened  by  its  afi'ections  "  should  read  "nourished  by  its  affections." 

On  page  57,  sixteenth  line,  "  would  not  have  been  "  should  read  "would  have  been." 

On  page  59,  thirtieth  line,  "  work  as  simple,  and  yet  as  sublime  "  should  read,  "  work 
so  simple,  and  yet  so  sublime." 

On  page  (il,  tenth  line,  "the  tendencies  of  the  reachings"  should  read,  "the  tendency 
of  her  teachings." 

On  page  65,  twelfth  line,  "  the  Jewish  "  should  read,  "  the  Jesuit."  Sixteenth  line,  "  o 
heir  iconoclasts  "  should  read,  "  of  these  iconoclasts." 


~K?-a-».  ji — a.   j.i.n.rrc7:i o C A/ 


,  ocpi,  rij  1075^ 


PREFACE. 


Believing  that  the  Bible  is  a  revelation  from  God,  given 
both  for  spiritual  enlightenment  and  as  a  great  popular  text- 
book, from  which  may  be  draw^n  a  clear  knowledge  of  those 
ethical  principles  upon  which  human  society  can  alone  success- 
fully build  individual  and  public  character,  I  have  in  my  spare 
moments  prepared  this  little  volume,  which,  it  is  hoped,  will  be 
found  to  contain  at  least  a  few  grains  of  truth,  and  be  instru- 
mental in  awaking  with  some  a  more  correct  comprehension  of 
the  essentiality  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures  in  the  developing  of 
a  healthy  social  and  civil  life. 

Political  and  social  reformers  are  constantly  and  ostentatiously 
laboring  to  correct  public  abuses,  and  to  impel  the  race  forward 
toward  the  ideal  ;  but  it  is  only  where  the  Bible  becomes  the 
source  of  popular  inspiration  that  we  find  an  active  reformatory 
spirit  and  a  permanent  progressive  movement.  And  it  is  this 
great  fact,  which  I  wish  to  indelibly  impress  upon  the  minds 
of  my  countrymen,  that  they  may  be  enabled  to  discharge  with 
fidelity  and  with  honor  those  sacred  trusts  of  conscience  and  of 
liberty  which  a  beneficent  Providence  has  committed  to  their 
care. 

The  writer  is  not  unconscious  of  the  penalties  as  well  as 
rewards  of  authorship.  Silence  may  bring  disappointment,  and 
criticism  may  bring  agony  of  spirit.  But  having  supreme  faith 
in  the  indestructibility  and  omnipotence  of  truth,  we  scatter  the 
golden  kernels  in  the  manner  most  in  consonance  with  the  inspi- 
rations of  our  soul,  trusting  in  the  fructifying  influences  of  the 
gentle  dews  and  wooing  sunshine,  which  ever,  in  the  fullness  of 
the  season,  bring  forth  the  sheaf,  and  then  the  bread. 

San  Francisco,  Sept.  ii,  1875. 


UNIYERSITY  OF 

(^LIFORNIA. 


THE  BIBLE5 

Its    Influence  ;     its    Relations    to    Republican    Government,    and    its 

Necessity  as  a  Text-Book  of  Ethics  in 

THE  Public  Schools, 


"  Tell  me  where  the  Bible  is,  and  where  it  is  not,  and  I  will  write  'a  moral 
geography  of  the  world." 

Was  significantly  remarked  by  a  certain  tourist 
whose  observations  were  not  alone  confined  to  art- 
galleries,  museums,  old  architecture,  classic  ruin,  and 
historic  reminiscence — material  expression  of  buried 
generations — but  were  more  especially  directed  to  the 
spiritual  manifestations  of  the  present — the  character, 
homes  and  institutions  of  the  living.  The  proposition, 
though  embodying  an  idea  popularly  recognized  as  a 
relic  of  Puritanism  —  too  antique  and  dogmatic  for 
this  self-sufficient,  speculative,  and  commercial  age, 
is  nevertheless  fundamental  in  character,  vital  in 
relationship,  and  broad  in  its  reachings  as  are  the 
necessities  of  the  common  weal ;  involving  as  it 
does,  political  and  social,  as  well  as  moral  conditions. 
Unworthy  of  consideration  though  it  may  be  deem- 
ed by  the  sensuous  masses,  it  possesses,  notwithstand- 
ing, for  the  statesman  equally  with  the  ethologist,  a 


8  THE  BIBLE 

Skepticism  may  weave  its  subtle  theories :  Material- 
ism may  shed,  as  the  diviner  revelation,  its  pale  light 
upon  the  human  understanding;  and  still,  the  written 
Word  of  God  stands,  and  will  stand  forever,  as  the 
chief  primate  in  the  true  development  of  man.  There- 
fore, as  suggested  in  the  proposition  we  quote,  the  Bi- 
ble is  the  grand  criterion  of  morality,  of  social  and  civil 
progress,  and  of  the  latent  resource  of  nations. 
So  effective,  so  uniform,  so  distinctive  is  it  in 
its  influences  in  developing  character,  that  we  need 
only  inquire  by  what  firesides  it  is  cherished,  and  from 
what  hearth-stones  it  is  rejected,  to  be  able  not  only 
to  determine  the  moral  character  of  communities,  but 
to  point  out  upon  the  world's  map  the  great  centres  of 
popular  intelligence,  of  useful  industry,  of  individual 
dignity,  of  physical  health  and  comfort,  of  personal 
grace  and  beauty,  as  well  as  to  draw  prophetic  outlines 
of  the  civil  and  social  destiny  of  peoples. 

The  logic  of  all  authentic  modern  history  unequiv- 
ocally confirms  what  is  here  assumed  wringing  even 
from  the  skeptic  Gibbon  the  declaration,  that  where- 
ever  the  Sacred  Scriptures  form  the  basis  of  religious 
faith,  there  do  we  find  "  the  most  distinguished  portion 
of  human  kind  in  arts  and  learning  as  well  as  in  arms  ;" 
and  from  Hume,  the  apologist  of  royalty  and  its  vices  ; 
the  traducerof  republican  virtues  and  of  the  Christian 
faith,  the  admission  that  the  great  spring  of  popu- 
lar action  under  the  English  Commonwealth  " — the 
period  when,  he  admits,  England  retrieved  her  lost 
power  upon  the  Continent,  and  established  it  upon 
the  sea,  "  was  the  inspiration  of  revealed  religion." — 
The  "fanaticism,"  as  he  terms  it  of  the  Puritans, that 
class  whose  moral  and  intellectual  forces  were  drawn 
fron*i  their  Bibles  and  their  hymn-books. 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  » 

The  testimony  of  an  observing  American  who  vis- 
ited Europe  a  few  years  prior  to  the  subversion  of  the 
Papal  States  is  not  inapplicable  here.  He  says  :  "  One 
glance  of  the  eye  will  inform  you  where  the  Bible  is 
and  where  it  is  not.  Go  to  Italy  :  decay,  destruction, 
suffering,  meet  you  on  every  side.  Commerce  droops, 
agriculture  sickens,  the  useful  arts  languish.  There 
is  a  heaviness  in  the  air.  You  feel  cramped  by  some 
invisible  power.  The  people  dare  not  speak  aloud ; 
they  walk  slowly ;  an  armed  soldiery  is  around  their 
dwellings ;  the  armed  police  take  from  the  stranger 
his  Bible  before  he  enters  the  territory. 

"  Ask  for  the  Bible  in  the  book-store,  it  is  not  there; 
if  so,  in  a  form  so  expensive  as  to  be  beyond  the  reach 
of  the  common  people.  The  preacher  takes  no  text 
from  the  Bible.  Enter  the  Vatican  and  inquire  for 
the  Bible,  and  you  will  be  pointed  to  some  case  where 
it  reposes  among  prohibited  books,  side  by  side  with 
the  works  of  Diderot,  Rousseau,  and  Voltaire.  But 
pass  over- the  Alps  into  Switzerland,  and  down  the 
Rhine  into  Holland,  and  over  the  Channel  to  England 
and  Scotland,  and  what  an  amazing  contrast  meets  the 
eye  ?  Men  and  women  look  with  an  air  of  independ- 
ence. There  are  industry,  neatness,  thrift,  instruction 
for  children.  Why  this  difference  ?  There  are  no 
brighter  skies — there  are  no  fairer  scenes;"  but,  he 
says,  "  they  have  the  Bible." 

And  it  is  herd,  in  the  light  of  divine  Revelation, 
that  humanity  has  written,  and  is  still  writing,  its 
grandest  epics.  It  is  here  that  the  loftiest  ideals  of 
the  pure  and  the  just,  the  heroic  and  sublime,  are 
most  nearly  approached.  God's  written  law  is  no  less 
certain  in  its  ultimate  effects  upon  mind  receptive 
than  is  His  unwritten  law  in  its  effects  upon  matter. 


10  THE  BIBLE 

Under  its  influence  the  soul  develops  into  forms  of 
beauty  and  of  strength,  prototypes  of  which  are  only 
found  in  the  purely  spiritual  and  purely  divine,  reach- 
ing back  even  into  the  mind  of  the  Infinite. 

Its  influence,  inherently  sovereign,  must  finally  be 
accepted  by  the  social  and  political  reform  as  the  only 
means  of  radical  and  permanent  improvement ;  as  the 
only  moral  analeptic  in  which  diseased  and  retrogres- 
sive communities  can  have  reasonable  hope. 

Mazzarin  sought  to  soften  and  refine  the  manners 
of  France  through  the  opera  and  the  ballet.  Lossing 
dreamed  of  reforming  the  world  through  the  power 
of  the  drama.  Kant  seized  upon  ideas  and  upon  pure 
reason  as  the  forces  by  which  he  could  perfect  a  sublime 
morality  and  establish  the  universal  republic.  Cer- 
vantes, Robinson,  Goldsmith,  Dickens,  Hawthorne, 
George  Elliot,  Mrs.  Southworth,  Arthur,  and  others, 
have  thought  to  ennoble  humanity  through  the  novel 
and  the  romance.  The  Goughs  would  reform  deprav- 
ed appetites  and  elevate  the  social  standard  through 
prohibitory  statutes  and  the  persuasive  power  of  the 
rostrum.  The  Stantons  would  correct  social  abuses 
and  sublimate  the  race,  until,  "  like  the  Beatrice  of 
Dante  it  waits  upon  divine  inspiration,"  through  the 
force  of  permissive  laws  and  the  ballot  for  woman ; 
but  all  these  agents,  adopted,  have  failed  in  their  mis- 
sion to  the  soul,  and  will  fail,  because,  lacking  the 
divinity  that  awakens  the  fundamental  forces  of  moral 
being,  no  conscience  kindles  or  responds  to  their 
calls. 

So  distinguished  a  scientist  as  Baron  Liebig  has 
said,  that  the  civilization  of  a  people  may  be  best 
measured  by  the  quantity  of  soap  consumed  ;  and  that 
another  has  discovered  that  the  commercial  demand 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  11 

for  iron  is  the  best  criterion  of  moral  and  social  ad- 
vancement ;  and  that  still  another  finds,  like  Mazza- 
rin,  that  the  songs  of  a  nation  form  the  best  index  oF 
its  progress  and  refinement.  But,  while  it  is  true  that 
soap  and  ballads  do  indicate,  to  a  large  degree,  taste 
and  sentiment,  and  iron  invention  and  industry,  it 
will  be  ascertained,  by  observation  and  statistics,  that 
the  most  refined  civilization  is  best  measured  by  the 
number  of  Bibles  found  at  the  firesides  and  the  altars 
of  a  people.  And  we  shall  also  find  that  even  the 
consumption  of  soap  and  the  demand  for  iron  increase, 
as  well  as  the  merit  of  ballads  improve,  in  exact  ratio 
with  the  popular  desire  for  Bibles. 

There  exists  no  longer  doubt  that  that  people  whose 
models  of  moral  excellence  are  most  faithfully  drawn 
from  the  inspired  Word  are  able  to  present  the  most 
refined  manners,  the  largest  industries,  the  noblest 
charities,  the  purest  literature,  the  most  varied  arts, 
the  most  equitable  laws,  the  most  stable  government, 
and  even  the  most  invincible  armies.  True,  there 
have  been  peoples  with  philosophies,  laws,  literature, 
industries,  and  military  renown,  without  the  Bible; 
but  the  civilization  of  the  most  distinguished  of  these 
was  no  more  than  a  brilliant  prolepsis  of  that  which 
was  to  come ;  no  more  than  genius,  in  the  dawn  of 
its  inspiration,  struggling  for  immortal  embodiment  in 
the  graces  of  the  material,  in  the  subtleties  of  dialec- 
tics, in  the  eloquence  of  harangues,  in  the  speculations 
of  philosophy,  and  in  the  achievement  of  arms.  Those 
inspiring  glimpses  of  the  attributes  of  the  Godhead, 
those  lofty  ideals  of  the  pure  in  morals,  those  enrap- 
turing visions  of  a  future  life,  those  grand  and  mighty 
impulses  of  enlightened  thought,  those  broad  utilities 
and  charities   which  so  mark  the  reign  of  Christian 


12  THE    BIBLE 

law,  have  no  place  in  the  civilization  or  philosophy  of 
such. 

Greece  has  left  an  enduring  impress  upon  the  world. 
Her  temples,  her  sculpture,  her  poetry,  her  oratory, 
her  philosophy,  and  her  arms  have  given  her  an  im- 
mortal memory.  And  yet,  while  these  were  giving 
her  immortality,  she  was  not  only  trampling  upon  the 
manhood  of  more  than  half  her  people,  but  her  man- 
ners were  course,  her  social  tastes  impure,  her  chari- 
ties mean,  her  industries  narrow,  her  ambitions  barba- 
rous, and  her  arms,  when  over  the  ages  they  cross 
with  those  of  the  Christian,  are  weak  and  unequal. 

Had  Paul  found  upon  the  Athenian  altar  this  in- 
scription :  *' To  the  .Known  God — the  Supreme, 
Eternal  One,  Absolute  Lawgiver,  Teacher,  Father;  " 
and  if  with  this  sublime  Theism  he  could  have  found 
interwoven  into  the  popular  heart  the  Messianic  hope 
that  so  kindled  the  vision  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  or 
that  even  which  seemed  to  so  tinge  the  faith  of  their 
own  "  divine  Plato,"  he  might  have  so  planted  there 
the  new  philosophy  that  Greece  would  not  have  ex- 
pired at  Corinth,  but  would  have  survived  the  rudest 
shocks  of  barbarism,  and  given  us  a  history  far  more 
inspiring  than  that  which  we  now  have,  in  the  most 
brilliant  chapters  of  her  marbles,  her  philosophy,  her 
eloquence,  her  epics,  or  her  valor. 

And,  too,  if  Paul  could  have  found  Rome  without 
a  Pantheon — Rome,  monotheistic;  and  if  at  the  close 
of  the  apostolic  period  the  gospels  of  Christ,  instead 
of  the  poems  of  Hesiod,  could  have  been  the  source 
of  popular  inspiration,  not  only  Greece  might  have  es- 
caped the  fury  of  the  Roman  eagles,  but  Rome  might 
have  escaped  the  fiery  vengeance  of  Alaric,  and  the 
present  hour  of  civilization  have  struck  centuries  ago. 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  13 

Tyndall,  in  his  Belfast  address,  draws  a  parallel 
between  Mohammedan  and  Christian  civilization,  at 
the  time  of  the  Moorish  occupancy  of  Spain,  in  favor- 
of  the  former.  With  seeming  unfairness  he  virtually 
forces  Draper  upon  this  point  into  antagonism  with 
Christianity.  In  quoting  him  in  support  of  his  own 
views,  he  says,  "  With  the  intrusion  of  the  Moors  into 
Spain,  cleanliness,  order,  learning,  and  refinement  took 
the  place  of  their  opposites.  When  smitten  with  dis- 
ease, the  Christian  peasant  resorted  to  a  shrine  ;  the 
Moorish  to  an  instructed  physician.  They  encourag- 
ed translations  from  the  Greek  philosophers,  but  not 
from  the  Greek  poets.  They  turned  with  disgust 
from  the  lewdness  of  our  classical  mythology,  and  de- 
nounced as  an  unpardonable  blasphemy  all  connec- 
tion between  the  impure  Olympian  Jove  and  the  Most 
High  God."  He  further  quotes  as  evidence  of  the 
superior  activity  of  the  Saracenic  intellect  and  liber- 
ality of  the  Mohammedan  faith  that,  "  Plato,  in  his 
absurd  notions  of  the  emission  of  light  by  the  eye, 
was  first  corrected  by  an  Arabian.  That  it  was  an 
Arabian  who  first  discovered  atmospheric  refraction; 
who  first  explained  the  enlargement  of  the  sun  and 
moon,  and  the  shortening  of  their  vertical  diameters 
when  near  the  horizen ;  who  first  constructed  a  table 
of  specific  gravities ;  improved  the  hydrometer ;  in- 
vented the*  method  of  measuring  time  by  pendulum 
oscillation ; "  and  that,  in  short,  it  was  the  Moham- 
medan, and  not  the  Christian,  who  at  this  period  was 
unfolding  the  sciences  and  cultivating  the  intellect  of 
the  age.  But  is  it  the  inciting,  the  enlightening,  the 
tolerant,  the  pure  and  sublime  philosophy  of  Christ 
which  the  subtly  lance  of  this  skeptic  would  so  skill- 
fully pierce  ?  or  is  it  a  mere  phantom — a  corruption 


14  THE  BIBLE 

of  the  real  essence — an  equal  triad  of  idolatry,  skep- 
ticism, and  formal  Christianity  which  we  acknowledge 
did  then  hold  its  scepter,  not  only  over  Catholic  Spain, 
but  over  Catholic  Europe,  and  which  we  willingly  ad- 
mit was  far  less  favorable  to  the  advancement  of  the 
sciences,  and  of  civilization,  than  were  the  then  pure 
Theism  and  rigid  precepts  of  Mohammed  ? 

And  is  this  distinguished  scientist  prepared  to  deny 
that  the  superior  activity  of  the  Arabian  intellect  and 
the  greater  liberality  of  the  Islam  faith  toward  the 
sciences,  the  arts,  and  literature  at  this  period  was  not 
after  all  due  to  the  influences  of  the  Bible,  upon  which 
he  well  knows  Mohammed  reared  his  great  structure 
of  theology  ? 

Will  not  a  knowledge  of  the  true  God,  of  Christ, 
even  as  a  prophet,  of  a  promised  Comforter,  of  a  res- 
urrection, of  a  judgment,  of  an  immortal  life,  have  an 
inspiring  and  elevating  effect  upon  the  soul,  even 
though  mingled  with  crudities  and  extravagant  ver- 
biage, as  in  the  Koran  ? 

The  Pentateuch,  the  Psalms,  and  the  Gospels  were 
the  foundation  of  the  faith  of  Mohammed ;  and, 
through  him,  these  it  were  surely  that  kindled,  direct- 
ed, and  liberalized  the  Moorish  intellect  when  in  the 
mediaeval  centuries  it  came  in  conflict  with  the  enslaved 
and  debauched  spirit  of  the  nominal  Christian.  But 
if  Tyndall  here  really  means  to  discriminate  against 
Christianity,  let  him  come  down  from  his  chosen 
period  and  draw  a  parallel  to-day  between  Christ  and 
Mohammed.  If  the  Koran  then  was  superior  to  the 
Bible  in  inciting  the  intellect  and  inspiring  the  hearts 
of  men,  why  the  contrast  now  ? 

Mohammed,  in  fact,  but  little  more  than  unified 
semi-barbarism  ;  although,  as  an  incident  of  the  plan, 


LIBEARY 

'   UNIVERSITY  Oj 

AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  OALIFBrNIA. 

he  did  for  a  time  arouse  the  higher  Hfe  oTiKe  SafaCerr"^~^"-^  "^ 
and  the  Moor  with  borrowed  inspiration.     But  Christ 

is  slowly  destroying  the  unities  of  Mohammed,  as  well 

as  those  of  all  false  theologies  and  creeds ;  and  is 
not  as  an  incident,  but  as  a  grand  design,  awaking  for 
all  time  the  higher  life  of  all  peoples  ;  and  is  steadily 
building  an  empire  under  whose  quickening  and  genial 
sway  the  written  and  unwritten  philosophies-  of  God 
will  fmally  harmonize  as  parts  of  a  grand  and  sublime 
unity. 

It  is  not  from  the  Theogony  of  the  Greek,  the 
Vedas  of  the  Hindu,  or  the  Zenda  of  the  Persian, 
nor  from  the  Koran  of  the  Mohammedan,  but  from 
the  Bible  of  the  Christian  that  modern  society  has 
imbibed  its  purest  ideas  of  ethics  ;  that  letters  and 
art  have  drawn  their  loftiest  expressions  ;  that  sci- 
ence and  industry  have  derived  the  spirit  of  their 
grandest  conquests  ;  that  charity  has  gathered  the  in- 
spirations of  its  sweetest  victories ;  that  law  has  re- 
ceived the  principles  of  its  divinest  equities  ;  and  that 
arms  even  have  caught  the  light  that  has  led  to  the 
most  brilliant  and  enduring  triumphs. 

The  perfect  in  civilization  and  government  can 
spring  from  no  other  source  than  the  Bible;  for 
among  all  the  systems  of  religion  and  ethics  which 
the  world  has  had  given  it,  the  human  soul  only  here 
finds  the  satisfaction,  the  fullness  of  its  spiritual, 
moral,  and  social  needs — that  the  grand  "  Ultimate  " 
of  the  intellectual  and  the  just,  the  pure  and  the  beau- 
tiful, the  meek  and  the  majestic,  the  merciful  and  the 
mighty,  is  revealed  to  us  in  an  unmistakable  person- 
ality— a  defined  and  real  presence. 

Philosophy  attempts  to  discover  in  Nature  an  infi- 
nite "  Satisfaction  "  for  the  emotional  and  intellectual 


16  THE  BIBLE 

necessities  of  man  ;  but,  after  following  natural  law 
through  all  its  complex  ramifications  to  the  utmost 
limit  of  the  experimental ;  after  tracing  organic  life 
through  all  its  innumerable  series  of  evolutions,  down 
through  the  ages  and  aeons  of  ages,  to  even  the  atom 
and  the  germ,  at  last  finds  itself  at  the  boundary  of 
the  realm  of  material  law,  still  unsatisfied,  confound- 
ed, overwhelmed,  even  as  was  the  "Human  Spirit" 
in  the  "  Dream  of  Richter,"  seeking  in  the  midst  of 
infinite  creations  for  outermost  suns,  for  frontier 
worlds. 

And  it  is  only  in  the  Inspired  Word  that  we  find 
not  alone  the  true  God — the  "  Grand  Ultimate  "  of 
the  infinite  aspirations  and  longings  of  the  soul — but 
those  great  fundamental  social  ideas,  the  common 
Fatherhood  of  God ;  the  common  brotherhood  of 
man  ;  the  common  heirship  of  life  immortal — a  divine 
triology,  by  which  the  vital  problems  of  sociology  and 
of  government  can  only  be  satisfactorily  solved. 

The  despotism  of  superior  intellect  and  power 
through  all  time  has  imposed  its  wrongs  upon  the 
masses  ;  and,  as  a  result,  the  inherent  sense  of  individ- 
ual right  from  the  beginning  has  periodically  manifest- 
ed itself  in  some  form  of  popular  discontent.  The 
contest,  however,  down  through  all  the  cycles  of  his- 
tory to  nearly  our  own  epoch,  has  been  fruitless,  sim- 
ply because  no  "  Pillar  of  Fire  "  awakened,  illuminated, 
and  etherialized  the  faith  of  the  oppressed.  It  was 
only  when  the  sublime  truths  of  the  Bible  awoke  the 
spiritual  life  of  man;  only  when  these  thrilled  the 
great  chords  of  popular  thought  ;  only  when  armies 
marched  to  the  chant  of  Hebrew  poetry  and  bayonets 
flashed  in  the  light  of  the  Cross,  that  human  bonds 
began  to  break ;  that  germs  of  equal  law  began  to 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  17 

crystalize ;  that  the  people  began  to  move  by  divine 
impulse  to  their  true  places  in  government,  and  that 
science,  art,  and  civilization  began  their  final  marcb 
to  the  conquest  of  the  world.  And  it  will  ever  be 
found  that  inexact  proportion  to  the  influences  which 
God's  Written  Law  has  over  popular  thought  will  gov- 
■ernment  become  popularized,  and  civilization  become 
progressive.  True,  free  government  ostensibly  graces 
the  history  of  some  of  the  earlier  periods,  even  at 
the  time  when  divine  revelation  was  yet  but  slowly 
descending  upon  Judea:  but  it  is  there  only  as  a  his- 
toric embellishment.  Roman  as  well  as  Grecian  liber- 
ty, in  a  correct  sense,  was  but  a  splendid  political 
mockery.  It  was,  in  fact,  no  more  than  a  polyarchy 
of  caste — an  aristocracy  in  which  popular  right  had 
no  recognition.  In  mediaeval  history  free  govern- 
ment claims  acknowledgment;  but  neither  the  victory 
of  Legnano,  the  prosperity  of  Venice,  nor  the  elo- 
quent enthusiasm  of  Rienzi  could  establish  it  upon 
a  rational  and  permanent  basis ;  simply  because  the 
Bible,  with  its  fundamental  ideas  of  human  rights  and 
of  equal  law,  had  not  yet  become  the  common  herit- 
age of  the  people.  Had  the  Church  of  the  Middle 
Ages  been  true  to  her  obligations — had  she  but  been 
a  faithful  exponent  of  the  cause  she  claimed  to  repre- 
sent, Italian  liberty  may  then  have  been  established 
to  the  enduring  benefit  of  all  succeeding  periods. 

In  modern  times  France  has  repeatedly  attempted 
the  establishing  of  free  government;  but  failure  has 
constantly  followed,  because  her  religious  and  moral 
faith  springs  from  no  higher  source  than  the  philos- 
ophy of  her  '*  Encyclopedists,"  or  of  the  dogmas  of 
a  corrupt  theology.  True  and  substantial  self-gov- 
ernment with  her  is  impossible,  until  she  emancipates 


18  THE    BIBLE 

her  faith  and  rises  above  the  materialism  and  super- 
stition which  now  fetter  her  aspirations  for  freedom. 

Edmond  About  would  have  it  that  France  is  a  sick 
soldier  of  God,  only  needing,  as  a  remedy,  the  lapse 
of  time  ;  but  he  should  have  said  France  is  a  sick  sol- 
dier of  the  Triumvirate — Cassarism,  Ecclesiasticism, 
and  Atheism ;  needing,  as  a  remedy,  a  free  Bible,  a 
free  conscience,  and  then  time. 

The  hopeful  but  unphilosophic  have  confidence  in 
her  present  experiment  to  construct  free  government ; 
but,  like  all  preceding  efforts,  it  m.ust  fail;  because 
Christ,  the  Inspiration  of  the  true  Republic,  has  not 
yet  supplanted  Voltaire,  Pompadour,  and  the  Pope,  in 
the  popular  heart.  When  France,  in  her  love,  gath- 
ers up  from  exile  the  ashes  of  her  Christian  reformers, 
and  places  them  as  tenderly  in  her  Pantheon  as  she 
has  those  of  her  Paladins*  and  of  her  great  Infidelt 
then,  and  only  then,  shall  we  see  streaking  the  hori- 
zon the  morning  of  her  freedom. 

The  very  first  step  of  departure  with  France  in 
the  new  line  of  government  was  a  violation  of  a  great 
fundamental  moral  and  social  law,  a  law  founded  in 
human  necessity  and  indissolubly  linked  with  human 
prosperity.  Following  in  the  moral  track  of  the 
Empire,  the  Republic  of  1870,  in  its  first  work  of  or- 
ganization, as  well  as  in  subsequent  elections,  trampled, 
with  all  the  fearlessness  of  Paganism,  upon  the  Chris- 
tian Sabbath  ;  betraying  thereby,  in  the  beginning, 
that  want  of  moral  integrity  which  is  vital  to  the  suc- 
cessful establishing  of  free  government.  Could  John 
Calvin  have  inspired  the  French  heart  with  the  spirit 
of  the  Reformation  as  did  Luther  that  of  the  German, 

*  Turenne,  Vaubau,  Napoleon, 
t  Voltaire. 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  19 

France  might  now,  with  her  aspirations,  not  only  be 
able  to  build  up  a  grand  structure  of  popular  sove- 
reignty, but  she  might  have  saved  herself  the  humilia^ 
tion  of  her  late  defeats.  The  Bible  at  her  firesides 
would,  in  the  three  centuries  since  Calvin,  not  only 
have  made  more  peaceful,  more  grand,  and  more 
mighty  her  history,  but  would  have  silently  built 
about  her  a  bulwark,  against  which  neither  the  di- 
plomacy of  Bismarck  nor  the  artillery  of  William 
could  have  prevailed. 

It  was  the  great  truths  of  the  Divine  Word,  scatter- 
ed centuries  in  advance  by  the  Jeromes  of  Prague, 
the  Husses  and  the  Luthers,  that  laid  the  foundation 
of  the  triumph  of  the  German  arms  at  Metz,  at  Stras- 
bourg, and  at  Sedan ;  and  that,  finally,  not  only  re- 
venged at  Paris  international  wrongs  of  two  hun- 
dred years,  but  great  social  and  religious  crimes  which 
France  had  so  long  committed  against  the  Christian 
world.  And  these  same  great  truths  are  now  in  turn 
destined,  in  the  fullness  of  God's  time,  to  lead  to  the 
overthrow  of  German  Imperialism,  and  to  build  upon 
its  ruins  a  great  empire  of  republican  law. 

Love  of  personal  independence  is  the  old  and  dis- 
tinguishing passion  of  the  German  heart.  Liberty  of 
thought  and  of  will,  and  loyalty  to  conscience  are  its 
historic  ideals.  This  spirit  dominated  in  rude  and 
turbulent  forms  in  the  ages  of  Tacitus  and  of  Lucien, 
and  reached  its  grandest  climax  in  the  devastations 
and  wrath  of  Alaric.  "  I  feel  a  secret  and  preternat- 
ural impulse  to  march  to  the  gates  of  Rome,"  said  the 
barbarian  chief,  in  reply  to  the  Christian  zealot ;  and 
Rome  finally,  at  midnight,  reeling  with  debauch, 
burned  and  bled  at  the  blast  of  the  Gothic  trumpet. 
*'  We  steer  as  the  winds  direct.     They  will  transport 


20  THE  BIBLE 

US  to  the  guilty  coast  whose  people  have  provoked 
the  divine  justice/'  said  Genseric  to  his  pilot;  and 
now  licentious  Rome  burned  and  bled  at  the  hands  of 
the  Vandal. 

Germanic  liberty  finally  subverted  by  feudalism, 
the  descendants  of  warlike  and  democratic  ancestors 
now  seek  its  restoration  through  the  peaceful  influ- 
ences of  philosophy.  To  regain  it,  theorists  violate 
the  reverence  of  ages,  trampling  down  faiths,  dogmas, 
and  traditions.  In  search  for  it,  they  subject  to  fiery 
analysis  the  universe  of  matter  and  of  spirit,  march- 
ing with  audacious  step  and  with  profane  criticism, 
under  the  cover  of  dialectics,  to  the  very  throne  even 
of  the  Infinite.  And  still  the  instinctive  and  supreme 
idea  —  liberty  —  has  not  yet  become  embodied  again 
in  sensible  form.  Afar  in  the  regions  of  theory  are 
hovering  still,  in  divine  idea,  the  republics  of  Kant 
and  of  Fichte,  waiting  to  descend  for  embodiment  in 
written  constitutions  and  statutes.  This  realization, 
however,  will  not  come  through  the  speculations  of 
philosophy,  but  only  through  the  facts  of  revelation. 
Through  the  theses  of  the  great  Reformer,*  and  not 
through  the  h3^potheses  of  the  philosopher,  is  germi- 
nating and  steadily  strengthening,  down  deep  at  the 
social  foundations,  the  revolutionary  force  that  is 
finally  to  restore  to  the  German — refined,  embodied, 
legalized  —  his  ancient  liberties. 

It  is  here,  in  the  stormy  polemics  and  sublime  dia- 
lectics of  Luther,  that  we  find  the  inspirations  of  the 
prophetic  revolution  of  Hein  —  that  revolution  in 
whose  awful  conflicts  lost  and  subverted  rights  are  to 
be  regained,  and  out  of  which  is  to  rise,  above  the 
ruins  of  monarchism,  the  genius  of  constitutional  lib- 

*  Luther. 


AND    ITS    INFLUENCE.  21 

erty.     Luther,  and  not  Spinoza,  nor  Kant,  nor  Fichte, 
nor  Hegal,  nor  Schelling,  nor  even  Leibnitz  or  Goethe, 
will  become  in  the  hour  of  freedom  the  great  glory  oL 
the  Germanic  race. 

Ireland  weeps,  counts  her  beads,  and  offers  her 
blood  for  the  restoration  of  her  ancient  honor.  But 
her  prayers  are  unanswered,  her  dreams  of  sovereignty 
pass  unfulfilled;  and  will,  until  the  people  become 
their  own  interpreters  of  God's  Written  Law,  and  ac- 
cept that  great  moral  Code  as  the  source  of  inspira- 
tion. If  this  gifted,  this  brave,  and  immortally  hope- 
ful race  would  be  free,  they  must  first  place  Bibles  at 
their  firesides  and  at  their  altars ;  and  then  free  em- 
pire may  have  foundation  in  the  free  thought  and  un- 
trameled  faith  of  the  people.  Let  this  be  the  initial- 
revolution  of  Ireland,  and  the  period  may  come  whert 
either  her  hopes  of  freedom  will  be  realized  or  her 
bond  of  union  with  Anglo-Saxon  destiny  will  become 
congenial  or  more  closely  knit. 

Tyndall  would  preserve  Ireland  from  "  spiritual  and 
intellectual  tyranny,"  and,  as  a  corollar}^  from  politi- 
cal, by  "  flashing  upon  the  minds  of  her  youth  the 
mild  light  of  science ;"  but  spiritual  and  intellectual 
chains  are  already  upon  her  Catholic  masses,  and  it  is 
not  in  the  "  flashings  of  the  mild  light  of  science," 
nor  in  the  dull  gloamings  of  pantheistic  materialism, 
as  all  history  afiirms,  but  in  the  effulgence,  the  fiery 
essence  of  the  Divine  Word,  that  these  chains  will 
melt. 

England,  with  her  Bibles,  will  always  make  laws 
for  Ireland,  with  her  dogmas.  And  England  with 
her  Bibles  will  yet  become  too  strong  for  England 
with  her  kings.  God's  Law,  with  broken  seal,  in  the 
English  homes,  chapels,  and  libraries,  is  slowly   but 


^'^  THE    BIBLE 

irresistably  lifting  the  masses  in  the  political  as  well 
as  social  scale,  and  educating  them  for  the  exercise  of 
sovereign  prerogatives. 

Had  Austria  welcomed  Luther  and  the  Reforma- 
tion, as  did  Saxony,  Brunswick,  and  Prussia,  her  bat- 
talions 300  years  after  would  not  have  been  scattered 
at  Sadowa  and  her  national  prestige  lost.  Her  new 
faith  would  have  removed  the  weakness  which  centu- 
ries of  superstition  and  ecclesiastical  tyranny  had 
brought ;  and  then  no  field  of  disaster  would  have  en- 
tombed her  pride,  and  no  hopeless  oaths  would  have 
been  written  in  blood  to  revenge  the  triumphs  of  the 
Prussian  needle-gun. 

Russia,  that  colossus  of  empire  and  of  Caesarism, 
with  its  chaos  of  tongues,  of  barbarisms,  of  civiliza- 
tions, of  sects,  of  sentiments,  and  of  ideas,  is  begin- 
ning to  quicken  and  thrill  in  all  its  living  atoms  under 
the  inspirations  of  the  Divine  Word.  As  matter  in 
its  primitive,  chaotic  state,  moves  in  lines  of  order  and 
aggregates  into  the  beautiful  crystal,  and  fmally  into 
the  luminous  world,  under  the  subtle  laws  of  attrac- 
tion, affinity  and  crystalization,  so  are  the  confused  and 
social  elements  of  this  great  empire  of  violence  and 
of  antagonisms,  under  the  silent  and  mysterious  influ- 
ences of  the  Revealed  Word,  slowly  but  surely  and 
grandly  crystalizing  into  a  harmonious  creation  of 
Sclavonic  individuality  and  power.  Through  the  col- 
porteur and  the  Holy  Synod  of  the  Greek  Church  the 
Bible  is  being  freely  circulated  throughout  the  impe- 
rial domain ;  and,  as  a  result,  is  gradually  creating  an 
improved  spiritual  and  social  life — a  new  and  mighty 
moral  force,  not  only  in  the  cottages  of  the  tradesman 
and  the  artisan,  but  in  the  palaces  of  the  nobles,  in 
the  dwellings  of  20,000,000  of  manumitted  serfs,  in 


AND    ITS    INFLUENCE.  23 

the  cabin  of  the  exile,  and  in  the  tent  even  of  the 
nomad  Tartar  —  a  moral  force  which  is  destined  to 
work  out  that  great  problem  of  ideal  freedom  which 
so  inspired  the  genius  and  burdened  the  prophetic 
spirits  of  Hertzen,  of  Pushkin,  of  Pestal,  and  of  Ry- 
leyof — those  grand  apostles  of  Sclavonian  unity,  con- 
science, order,  and  liberty. 

The  republicans  of  Spain  hoped  to  establish  free 
government  upon  the  ruins  of  Bourbonism,  but  the 
effort  was  premature  and  failed.  Neither  the  philoso- 
phy nor  eloquence  of  Castellar,  though  coupled  with 
the  earnest  zeal  of  able  compatriots,  was  sufficient  to 
secure  success.  These  apostles  of  freedom  should 
first  have  prepared  the  way  for  their  gospel  by  enfran- 
chising the  religious  faith  of  the  masses.  Individual 
thought  and  conscience  should  first  have  been  awak- 
ened by  the  implanting  of  divine  truth.  The  colpor- 
teur with  his  tracts  and  Testaments  for  the  million,  and 
the  evangelist  with  an  open  Bible,  should  first  have 
been  called  into  the  service  of  Spanish  freedom.  A 
free  Bible  and  a  free  conscience,  here  as  elsewhere, 
must  become  the  heralds  of  political  liberty.  And 
this,  in  fact,  inconsistent  as  it  may  appear  with  the 
public  policy  of  Castellar,  receives  his  earnest  indorse- 
ment when  he  says  :  "  If  the  Latin  peoples  could  read 
— if  they  were  obliged,  at  least  every  Sunday,  to  turn 
the  pages  of  the  Bible  instead  of  hearing  the  chants 
of  their  priests  in  a  strange  and  unutterable  language, 
would  they  not  have  been  two  centuries  ago  republi- 
can ?"  "  Because,"  he  says,  "  the  Bible  is  full,  from  the 
first  page  to  the  last,  I  will  not  say  of  republican  ideas, 
but  certainly  of  republican  sentiments,  which,  with 
their  poetry,  have  greater  influence  among  the  people 
at  present." 


24 


THE    BIBLE 


It  is  unphilosophical  and  impossible  to  successfully 
establish  and  maintain  republican  institutions  until 
the  public  mind  is  spiritually  enfranchised  and  thor-- 
oughly  imbued  with  those  moral  and  religious  prin-^ 
ciples  which  God  only  has  revealed  in  His  written 
Word  as  the  rule  of  human  conduct.  A  republic 
from  necessity  must  have  a  spiritual  prototype  in  the 
hearts  of  the  masses,  or  else  its  existence  at  best  will 
be  but  feeble  and  but  a  burlesque  upon  free  govern- 
ment. 

If  those  representative  agitators  of  republican 
ideas,  Kossuth,  Mazzina,  and  Garibaldi,  had  in  the 
beginning  but  assumed,  as  their  life-work  in  the  great 
drama  of  political  reform,  the  sublime  apostolate  of 
the  Cross,  laboring  first  to  give  the  Old  World  a  true 
faith  and  a  true  conscience,  Europe  now,  instead  of 
suffering  the  pangs  of  premature  political  births, 
might  feel  the  mighty  movings  of  embryonic  empires, 
whose  timely  advent  would  be  hailed  as  an  apocalypse 
of  liberty  by  a  generation  born,  not  only  to  be  free,, 
but  to  establish  and  to  maintain  freedom;  writing,  if 
it  need  be,  its  sublime  statutes  by  the  light  of  battles 
and  with  the  blood  of  martyrdom. 

Garibaldi,  to  his  credit,  did,  in  his  great  scheme  of 
Unification,  comprehending  the  potency  of  divine 
revelation  in  emancipating  the  public  mind,  scatter 
throughout  Italy  his  hx\Q,i  foliums  or  scriptural  frag- 
ments, as  an  essential  preliminary  in  the  struggle  with 
Ecclesiasticism  for  national  unity  and  independence. 
And  it  is  primarily  to  the  influence  of  this  stroke  of 
spiritual  and  political  philosophy  that  Garibaldi  owes, 
in  part,  his  prominence,  and  Italy  her  freedom  from 
priestly  thraldom. 

With  the  truths  of  the  Bible  thoroughly  interwovea 


AND    ITS    INFLUENCE.  25 

in  the  beginning  into  the  faith  of  the  people,  these 
reformers  might  have  laid  the  foundation  upon  which 
popular  government,  in  due  time,  would  have  arisen 
in  defiance  of  despotism.  There  is  more  latent  mili- 
tary energy  to  be  marshalled  in  behalf  of  freedom  in 
a  single  copy  of  God's  Word  than  there  is  in  a  whole 
squadron  of  enslaved  or  materialistic  bayonets.  It 
was  the  influence  of  a  single  Bible  that  awoke  the 
spirit  of  the  Reformation ;  that  crippled  the  power 
of  Rome  ;  that  drove  back  the  arms  of  Charles — forc- 
ing his  abdication  ;  that  wrested  the  Netherlands  from 
the  empire  of  Philip ;  that  saved  Protestant  liberty 
on  the  field  of  Leutzan  ;  that  under  Cromwell  laid  the 
foundation  of  English  commerce  and  power ;  that  for 
ever  made  grand  and  immortal  through  the  Covenant- 
er the  memory  of  the  Scot ;  that  gave  to  the  West  a 
great  empire  of  freedom,  and  that  has  finally  impelled 
Anglo-Saxon  language  and  law — those  great  mission- 
aries of  thought,  liberty,  and  order — over  half  the 
globe.  When  the  European  liberalist  accepts,  as  a 
political  axiom  of  universal  application,  the  faith  of 
John  Owen,  that  "  The  Bible  is  England's  best  hope," 
then  he  will  comprehend  the  true  philosophy  of  found- 
ing free  government,  and  republicanism,  as  a  neces- 
sary result,  will,  in  the  end,  advance  to  universal 
supremacy. 

The  "  United  States  of  Europe,"  of  which  the 
republican  theorist  now  dreams,  will  only  assume 
promise  and  tangibility  when  the  Bible  shall  have- 
become  a  sacred  and  universal  heir-loom  with  the: 
cottager — when  its  poetry,  its  ethics,  and  its  spiritual 
revelations  shall  have  inspired  the  emotions,  refined 
the  morality,  and  sublimated  the  faith  of  the  now 
stolid,  down-trodden,  priest-ridden  masses.    This  great 


26  THE    BIBLE 

truth  is  forcibly  exemplified  in  our  own  history.  The 
century  next  preceding  the  formation  of  the  Repub- 
lic may  justly  be  denominated  the  religious  epoch — 
literally,  the  period  of  the  Bible — the  heroic  period, 
out  of  which  sprang  the  Revolution  and  constitu- 
tional liberty.  Under  colonial  regime  the  Bible  found 
a  place  in  every  family  and  school ;  and  from  this, 
more  than  from  any  other  cause,  came  our  declara- 
tion of  rights,  which  not  only  focalized  the  holiest 
aspirations  of  all  preceding  ages,  but  which  gave  to 
freedom  an  impulse  that  will  thrill  all  the  ages  of 
the  future.  So  important  was  the  Inspired  Word 
considered  in  the  maintaining  of  self-government  in 
our  early  history  that  the  Congress  of  1777,  on 
grounds  of  political  and  moral  necessity,  ordered  the 
printing  and  circulation  among  the  people  of  20,000 
copies  of  the  Scriptures.  And  the  Congress  of  178 1, 
for  the  same  reasons,  ordered  for  public  use  30,000 
copies  more. 

And  here  it  is,  in  this  early  national  faith  in  God's 
word,  rather  than  in  the  abstract  wisdom  of  states- 
men or  the  genius  of  martial  leaders,  that  rests  the 
primary  cause  of  our  national  progress.  The  heroes 
of  the  Revolutionary  tribune  and  battle-field  were  but 
the  consequent,  the  inevitable  offspring  of  an  historic 
period,  which,  under  the  procreative  and  quickening 
influences  of  the  Divine  Word,  pulsated  and  glowed 
with  heroic  life.  That  epoch  could  have  produced 
none  others  than  heroes;  could  have  produced  no 
results  other  than  the  establishing  of  constitutional 
liberty.  As  the  legendary  angel  of  the  Talmud  visits 
and  inspires  the  unborn  child,  so  did  the  angel  of  the 
Word  visit  the  unborn  nation,  and  touched  its  heart, 
not  only  with  an  irrepressible  love  of  freedom,  but 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  27 

with  the  unconquerable  energies  of  revolution.  By 
this  moral  light  we  were  ushered  into  the  family  of 
nations,  and  unconsciously  guided  through  the  politi--- 
cal  wilderness  of  the  theoretic — were  unconsciously 
directed  over  untrodden  and  unknown  paths  in  our 
first  efforts  to  demonstrate  the  new  problem  of  gov- 
ernment. And  it  was  our  Bibles,  remotely  inspiring 
the  popular  heart  with  the  sublime  equities  of  the 
Higher  Law  and  the  daring  of  a  lofty  faith,  that  finally 
snapped  as  ropes  of  sand  the  old  thralls  of  party  servi- 
tude, and  brought,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  the 
^reat  North  to  its  feet  to  meet  in  solid  column  the 
advance  of  the  slave  power.  It  was  the  silent  forces 
of  the  Divine  Word,  coming  up  with  the  seeming 
might  and  majesty  of  Omnipotence  through  nearly 
two  hundred  years  of  colonial  and  national  life,  that 
made  invincible  the  arms  of  freedom  at  Gettysburg, 
Antietam,  Shiloh,  and  Lookout  Mountain,  and  that 
£nally,  in  the  hour  of  the  nation's  triumph,  drawing 
a  veil  over  the  examples  of  history,  extended  to  the 
conquered  the  olive-branch  instead  of  the  sword — the 
fraternal  welcome  instead  of  the  avenging  statute. 
So  long  as  the  Bible  directs  the  popular  conscience, 
so  long  will  popular  liberty  with  us  remain  impregna- 
ble. But  whenever  the  American  people  put  from 
them  this  great  moral  educator,  and  renounce  the 
early  faith  of  the  Republic,  then  will  have  commenced 
a  political  decline  which  has,  perhaps,  in  Gibbon  or 
Bulwer  an  historic  parallel.  And  as  we  comprehend 
this,  who,  I  ask,  is  not  startled  with  the  thought,  in 
view  of  the  religious,  moral,  and  political  delinquen- 
cies of  the  hour,  that  this  national  renunciation  may 
not  already  in  effect  have  been  proclaimed,  and  a- 
consequent  decline  may  not  have  even  now  commen- 


28 


THE  BIBLE 


ced  ?  Certain  it  is,  the  Bible  has  no  longer  that  hold 
upon  the  reverence  and  affections  of  the  masses  it  once 
had.  And  certain  is  it,  that  that  firm  religious  trust, 
that  rigid  moral  rectitude,  that  stern  and  simple  vir- 
tue, which  so  distinguished  the  nation  in  its  heroic 
and  most  republican  days,  is  no  longer  a  prominent 
trait.  And  also  certain  is  it  that  that  same  social 
and  moral  condition  which  has  invariably  preceded 
the  decay  of  other  commonwealths  is  now  being 
established  with  us. 

The  simple  manners  and  rigid  virtues  of  the  gen- 
eration of  men  who  made  Marathon,  Salamis,  and 
Platea  immortal  were  lost  in  the  luxurious  ages  of 
Cimon  and  of  Periclese.  With  the  influx  of  wealth 
from  conquest,  from  tribute,  and  from  the  mines  of 
Thasos  and  of  Laurion,  came  luxury,  vulgar  ostenta- 
tion, coarse  sensuality,  public  extravagance,  official 
corruption,  and   then  the  decline  of  Grecian  liberty. 

Private  and  public  virtue  gave  Rome  laws,  wealth, 
and  power,  but  the  abuse  of  these  gave  her  Caesar, 
Nero,  the  Pretarian  Guards,  and  then  the  Barbarians. 

No  close  observer  of  the  times,  familiar  with  his- 
tory and  the  indissoluble  relations  between  free  gov- 
ernment and  sound  morality,  can  deny  that  our  insti- 
tutions are  threatened  with  danger.  Human  nature, 
fundamentally,  has  experienced  no  perceptible  change 
with  the  progress  of  the  centuries.  Two  hundred 
years  of  unparalleled  moral  and  political  discipline 
have  in  no  way  modified  the  innate  love  of  individual 
aggrandizement  and  power,  even  in  the  American 
heart.  Catalines  and  Caesars  are  to-day  in  our  midst, 
in  the  garb  of  the  most  meek  citizens  of  the  Repub- 
lic. The  tyrant  is  ever  present  with  us,  waiting,  un- 
consciously though  it  may  be,  the  opportunity  down 


AND  ITS  INFLUENC;^.  ^      /  29 

the  scale  of  national  decadence,  to  measure  and  fix 
upon  our  soil  the  boundaries  of  his  empire.  So  sure 
as  it  is  that  God's  moral  law  is  immutable — is  still  su- 
preme throughout  the  conscious  universe — is  still  the 
great  Code  by  which  we  are  to  be  governed  in  the 
maintaining  of  social  order  and  of  political  liberty — so 
sure  is  it  that,  unless  there  is  a  tightening  of  moral 
bonds,  a  restraining  of  individual  and  public  exces- 
ses in  the  use  of  wealth,  privilege,  and  power,  and 
a  harmonizing  of  our  life  with  the  philosophy  of  the 
Divine  Word,  we  are  destined,  at  no  remote  period, 
to  reach  a  point  in  our  history  at  which  liberty  of 
conscience  and  of  political  sentiment  will  cease  to  ex- 
ist as  cardinal  features  of  our  government.  This  is 
no  creation  of  morbid  fancy,  but  is  the  solemn  decla- 
ration of  history,  the  inevitable  deduction  of  philoso- 
phy, and  the  prophecy  of  an  inspired  faith.  The 
astronomer  can,  with  no  more  exactitude,  predict  an 
eclipse,  the  return  of  a  periodic  comet,  or  of  a  varia- 
ble sun,  than  can  the  political  philosopher  determine 
the  final  result  of  the  moral  and  religious  sentiments 
of  a  people.  Law  extends  its  scepter  over  nations, 
as  well  as  over  worlds,  determining  their  orbits,  their 
influences,  and  their  destiny. 

And  it  is  in  the  presence  of  this  danger  that  we 
are  led  to  appreciate  the  importance,  in  the  preserva- 
tion of  republican  institutions,  of  a  spiritualized,  vigi- 
lant, and  aggressive  Christian  Church — that  we  per- 
ceive the  true  relations  which  exist  between  Church 
and  State ;  that  the  problem  of  religious  and  politi- 
cal unity  with  us  passes  to  a  satisfactory  solution. 

The  Bible,  the  great  conservator  of  morals  and  of 
law,  as  well  as  the  grand  primordial  in  the  establish- 
ing  of  our  government,  is  a  special  trust  of  the  Church. 


30  THE  BIBLE 

And,  as  such,  its  truths  become  popularized  and  in> 
terwoven  into  the  public  faith  in  exact  proportion  to 
the  fidelity  with  which  that  trust  is  discharged.  If 
true  to  her  obligations,  the  Church,  through  the  citi- 
zen, becomes  the  sure  support  and  hope  of  the  State, 
vitalizing  every  pulsation  and  enriching  every  current 
of  its  life  with  that  moral  sense  and  moral  force  whichy 
with  the  certainty  of  natural  law,  not  only  secures 
personal  right,  but  gives  to  the  Republic  material 
wealth,  social  grandeur,  and  civil  security.  Not  that 
the  church,  as  an  organization,  should  assume,  or  at- 
tempt to  assume,  a  single  prerogative  of  State,  but 
should,  through  her  teachings,  impress  upon  the  pop- 
ular heart  the  great  principles  of  God's  Revealed 
Law.  Through  the  religious  sentiments  of  the  na- 
tion, she  should  refine  its  ethics,  purify  its  passions, 
invigorate  its  intellect,  inspire  its  laws,  unify  its  sym^ 
pathies,  and  thereby  build  about  its  liberties  an  im- 
pregnable bulwark.  That  the  Church  is  subject  to 
arraignment  for  neglect  of  duty  here  cannot  be  de- 
nied. Existing  facts  testify  too  loudly  against  her. 
The  moral  and  social  desolations  of  the  period  con- 
vict her  of  serious  delinquencies. 

The  spread  of  infidelity,  the  steady  growth  of  licen- 
tiousness, the  despotism  of  wealth  and  threatened 
revenges  of  labor,  the  decline  of  republican  virtue  and 
of  private  and  public  integrity,  are  living  records  of 
her  recreancy.  Perpetually  are  the  melancholy  testi- 
monies of  her  guilt  coming  up  from  the  cells  of  pris- 
ons, the  dens  of  crime,  the  hovels  of  distress,  the  pal- 
aces of  dissipation,  the  tribunals  of  perverted  justice, 
the  halls  of  venal  legislation,  the  mercenary  presence 
of  executive  power,  and  even  from  the  very  shadows 
of  her  own  altars. 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  31 

Individual  and  public  morality,  personal  comfort, 
popular  intelligence,  pecuniary  independence  of  the 
masses,  and  the  equity  of  statutory  laws,  constitute, 
the  spiritual  thermometer  which  indicates  the  zeal 
and  fidelity  of  Christ's  people.     If  chastity  is  a  dis- 
tinguishing trait ;   if  laws  are  just  and  are  faithfully 
observed  ;  if  honor  in   the  commercial  and  political 
scales  has  more  gravity  than  gold ;   if  charity  extends 
impartially  her  loving  hands  to  the  unfortunate ;  if 
industry  and  gold  unite  in  the  promotion  of  human 
comfort ;  if  the  decalogue  is   wrought  into  the  con- 
sciences of  the  masses,  then  we  may  know  that  the 
Church  is  upon  her  knees ;   that  upon  her  forehead  is 
streaming  the  light  of  God ;  that  upon  her  lips  are 
glowing  those  immortal  truths  which  have  come  down 
from  lawgiver  and  prophet,  Messiah  and  apostle,  for 
the  refining  and  the  enfranchising  of  the  world.     But 
if  hearthstones  are  breaking;  if  Sabbaths  are  forgot- 
ten;  if  prisons   are  crowded;  if  laws  are  unjust;  if 
wealth  supplants  virtue  and  poverty  becomes  a  syno- 
nym for  crime ;  if  gold  plants  its  jeweled  heel  upon 
the  heart  of  labor,  and,  in  expiation,  builds  costly 
altars   to  the   Most   High;  if  immorality  taints  the 
atmosphere  of  private  and  public  life ;  if  the  pulpit 
becomes  enervated,  and  ceases  its  fearless  criticisms, 
its  fiery  threatenings,  and  its  sacred  individuality  be- 
comes involved  in  the  whirl  of  luxury  and  of  worldly 
excitement — then  we  may  know  the  Church  is  recre- 
ant to  her  trust ;   that  infidelity  has  chilled  her  faith, 
and  that  indolence  and  ease  are  more  congenial  to 
her  tastes  than  are  those  toils  and  sufferings,  those 
self-  denials  and  disinterested  loves  which  have  ever 
been  and  which  ever  will  be  the  only  sygnets  of  her 
fidelity,  the  only  gems  that  will  sparkle  in  her  coronet 


32  ,  THE  BIBLE 

in  that  great  day  when  her  mission  is  complete  and 
the  world  passes  to  final  judgment. 

And  is  it  difficult  to  determine  the  spiritual  condi- 
tion of  the  Church  to-day,  guided  by  these  evidences  ? 
Are  our  homes,  as  a  rule,  eminent  nurseries  of  the 
good,  the  true,  and  the  lofty  in  character  ?     Are  they 
moral  castles,  strong  and  impregnable  in  their  walls 
and  their  towers  ?     Do  their  fires  never  die  out  with 
those  who  in  love  kindled  them,  and  who  in   unity 
nourished  them  ?     Go  to  the  records  of  our  courts, 
and  there  read  of  the  desolation  of  firesides,  of  the 
wrecks  of  sacred  hopes,  of  the  sundering  of  tender 
ties,  of  the  sorrows   of  helpless  offspring,  and  then 
answer.     Are  our  Sabbaths  held  in  sacred  remem- 
brance and  revered  as  holy  because  of  the  commands 
of  God  and  the  wants  of  humanity  .^^     Go  stand  on 
that  day  upon  the  thoroughfares  and  at  the  outlets 
of  our  cities  and  towns,  and  listen  to  the  roll  of  the 
drum,  the  blare  of  the  trumpet,  and  the  shouts  of  the 
returning  mob.     Go  out  upon  your  streets  at  the 
hour  of  Sabbath  evening  hymn  and  witness  the  crowd- 
ed vestibules  of  your  theatres,  the  brilliant  and  thronged 
saloon,  the  dimly  -  lighted  but  packed,  mephitic,  sub- 
terranean dance  -  rooms  that  everywhere  allure  to  fas- 
cinate, unbalance,  and  overthrow  your  sons  and  your 
neighbors,  and  then  answer.     Are  our  jails  and  pen- 
itentiaries decreasing  and  becoming  tenantless  ?     Go 
visit  our  seats  of  government,  and  there  examine  the 
constantly-augmenting  appropriations  for  their  exten- 
;sIon  and  support,   and  then   answer.     Does  wealth 
hide  no  moral  deformities ;  does  it  never  seduce  the 
heart  and  steal  the  homage  due  to  virtue  ?     Is  even 
honest  poverty  more  a  misfortune  than  an  aggravated 
crime?    Go  into  all  the  walks  of  life — upon  the  streets. 


AND    ITS    INFLUENCE.  33 

into  the  public  assembly,  the  halls  of  justice,  and  even 
into  the  sanctuary  of  prayer,  and  there  witness  the 
license  allowed  to  wealth — the  deference,  the  partiali-^ 
ties,  and  the  slavish  obsequiousness  so  anxiously  paid 
to  gold,  and  then  answer.     Is  the  social  atmosphere 
free    from  moral  taints  that  poison    and  wither  the 
greenest  and  holiest  of  human    fruitage  ?     Go  into 
the  retirements  of  domestic   life,  and  there   glance 
over  the  columns  and  cuts  of  the  periodicals  which 
too   often    find  welcome   from  under   the  pens    and 
pencils  of  perverted  genius,  and  then  answer.     Do 
the  pulpits  and  the  press  of  the  Church  fill  the  land 
with    their  voices;    reaching   all    the   by-ways    and 
dark  recesses  of  human  misery  with  their  prophetic 
words  of  warning,  their  tender  accents  of  sympathy, 
their  anxious  pleadings  for  a  higher  life  ?     Go  into 
the  abodes  of  luxury,  into  the  hovels  of  poverty,  into 
the  haunts  of  crime,  and  there  mark  as  a  rule  either 
ihe  absolute  religious  solitude,  or,  at  best,  only  the 
faint  and  occasional  echoes  of  an  equivocal  and  un- 
impassioned  appeal  from  these   ministers  of  Christ, 
and   then  answer.     Do  these  assumed  advocates  of 
a  beneficent  gospel  as   fearlessly  espouse  the  cause 
of  the  poor,  in  their   unequal    struggle  with  wealth 
and  power,  as  of  the   opulent?      Go   listen    to  the 
pathetic  recitals  of  the  weak ;    to  the  sighs  of  over- 
worked, ill-paid  labor,  as  it  rises,  with  aching  heart 
and  tired  limb,  to  toil  through  the  long  hours  in  the 
vitiated  atmosphere  of  the  task-room,  or  in  the  swel- 
tering sun,  or  pitiless  storm,  that  mere  shelter,  bread, 
and  garments  may  be  won   for  the  waiting,  patient 
companions  of  a  dwarfed  and  cheerless  life,  and  then 
answer. 


LIBEARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

CALIFORNIA. . 


34  THE    BIBLE 

Do  these  assumed  tribunes  of  divine  equity  as  bold- 
ly  attack  crime  in  the  purple  as  in  the  garb  of  the 
peasant  ?  Go  to  the  cells  of  the  prison  and  there  see 
only,  as  a  rule,  the  victims  either  of  a  moral  or  a  so- 
cial necessity;  those  upon  whom  in  the  cradle,  and 
even  in  the  womb,  has  only  fallen  a  darkened  moral 
light,  or  upon  whom  the  remorseless  hand  of  penury, 
revenge,  or  of  seeming  fate,  has  heavily  rested ;  while 
the  tinseled,  dramatic  actor  of  stupendous  crime  is 
still  free  to  sneer  at  courts  and  juries,  at  divine  in- 
junctions, at  human  virtues,  and  to  build  about  him 
still  higher  and  higher  his  impregnable  bulwarks  of 
gold,  and  then  answer.  Do  the  hands  of  ordination 
always  fall  upon  those  worthy  of  being  denominated 
"  stars  in  the  right  hand  of  Christ ;  "  worthy  of  the 
mantle  of  such  as  Knox,  Luther,  Edwards,  Wesley, 
Asbury,  McKendree,and  others  of  the  great  apostolic 
line,  with  whom  self-denial,  toil,  suffering,  and  even 
death  were  welcome,  if  for  the  glory  of  the  cross  and 
the  amelioration  of  human  want?  Go  lift  the  cur- 
tain that  hides  the  interior  life  of  some  of  our  clergy 
mark  their  leanings  toward  the  materialism  of  the 
Tyndalls,  of  the  Spencers,  or  of  the  Huxleys;  their 
gravitations  toward  the  utilitarianism  of  Hume,  the 
psilanthropism  of  Channing,  or  the  ritualism  of  Rome. 
Follow  them  out  into  the  busy  world,  as  they  tread 
their  way  among  the  multitudes,  along  the  avenues 
of  worldly  profit,  into  the  great  highways  of  specula- 
tion, crossing  even  the  threshold  of  the  Stock  Ex- 
change, that  arena  of  chance  and  of  guilded  fraud, 
so  ghastly  with  the  wrecks  of  fortune,  of  honor,  of 
life,  and  of  a  future  hope,  and  there  witness  in  the 
priestly  heart  its  consuming  greed,  its  fireless  altar, 
its  dead  Urim  and  Thummim,  and  then  answer.  Truly, 


AND    ITS    INFLUENCE.  35 

the    emergencies  of  the  hour   call    for  a  more  self- 
abnegating,  a  more  enthusiastic,  a   more  aggressive 
and  comprehensive  spirit  at  the  great  centres  of  re^ 
ligious  force.     From  these  sources  of  power  an  influ- 
ence should  go  forth  which  would  pervade  the  entire 
social  being  of  the  Republic  ;  vitalizing  its  conscience, 
quickening  its  faith,  and  inspiring  all  its  activities  with 
a  stern    and    sublime    rectitude.     When    that   great 
Catholic    Missionary,  Francis  Xavier,  was  on  the  eve 
of  departure  for  India,  he  was  shown  in  dreams  of 
the  night   the  fields   he  was    to  win  to    the    Truth. 
Vast  continents,  islands,  and  empires   which  he  was 
to  conquer  to  the  "  Holy  Faith  "  arose,  one  after  an- 
other, upon   his  vision    like   a  retinue  of  unlighted 
worlds ;  and  yet,  in  the   fervor  of  his   religious  zeal 
and  infinity  of  his  apostolic  ambition,  he  exclaimed, 
"  Yet   more,  O  my  God  !    yet    more !"      And    such 
should  be  the  zeal  of  every  herald  of  the   Cross  in 
these   days   of  decaying  faith.      The   cry  of  Xavier, 
"  Yet  more,  O    my  God !   yet  more !"    should   echo 
from  every  consecrated  lip  until  the  great  heart  of  the 
nation  would   pulsate  in  rythmic   harmony  with  the 
pure  and  sublime  spirit  of  the  Divine  Logos. 

To-day,  even,  the  Church,  like  a  dumb  and  paralytic 
prophet  under  the  weight  of  Divine  displeasure,  is  sit- 
ting in  the  midst  only  of  a  splendid  barbarism.  The 
ideal  civilization  of  the  Christian  is  still  in  the  womb 
of  the  future.  It  is  not  enough  that  we  as  a  people 
theoretically  assume  the  Christian  faith  ;  that  we 
stamp  "  God  "  upon  our  coin,  or  incorporate  the  sa- 
cred name  into  our  Constitution.  It  is  not  enough 
that  we  build  costly  houses  of  worship  and  swing  their 
doors  to  the  comfortably -fed  and  comfortably  -  clad ; 
that  we  found  schools  in  the  name  of  freedom  and  yet 


o 


6  THE  BIBLE 


1-efuse  the  child  its  sacred  creed.  It  is  not  enough 
that  we  give  by  proxy  to  the  poor  and  formally  bury 
the  pauper  in  the  name  of  the  Lord ;  that  we  ordain 
public  humiliations  and  fasts,  national  thanksgivings 
and  prayer.  It  is  not  enough  that  we  plant  our  faith 
by  the  Ganges,  the  Yang-tse-Kiang,  the  Nile,  and 
upon  the  islands  of  the  sea.  Rome,  the  mother  of 
popular  ignorance,  of  intolerance,  and  of  want,  can 
boast  of  all  this,  even  upon  a  broader  and  a  grander 
scale.  Constantine  and  his  barbaric  legions  with  equal 
right  boasted  of  the  Christian  faith  upon  the  plea 
that  they  bore  its  symbol  upon  their  banners  and 
their  shields,  carrying  it  as  the  ensign  of  ambitious 
conquest.  Something  more  than  this  is  needed  to 
develop  into  symmetrical  proportion  the  moral,  social 
and  political  character  of  the  nation.  If  we  would 
build  up  into  ideal  strength  and  beauty  the  manhood 
and  womanhood  of  the  Republic,  we  must  reach  the 
inner  life  of  the  masses,  arouse  the  public  conscience, 
and  touch  all  the  springs  of  the  divine  and  heroic  in 
the  great  popular  heart. 

To  accomplish  this,  however,  there  must  be  a  sys- 
tematic, an  energetic,  unremitting,  universal  effort. 
No  violent,  spasmodic  local  outburst  of  public  virtue 
will  alone  avail.  The  moral  lapse  is  too  great,  too 
widely-spread  to  admit  of  any  course  but  that  which 
shall  thoroughly  and  permanently  improve  and  inspire 
the  fundamental  forces  of  life.  As  the  Roman  hier- 
archy plans  and  labors,  not  for  this  alone,  but  for  the 
coming  centuries,  so  should  the  true  Church,  by  a  uni- 
form, constant,  and  persistent  effort,  labor  to  build  up 
and  mould  the  personality  of  the  nation  into  forms  of 
ethic  and  civic  beauty.  If  the  Church  would  fully 
perform  her  obligations,  preserving  with  all  civil  and 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  37" 

religious  liberty  inviolate,  she  must  radically  change 
her  agents  and  modes  of  popular  education.  In^ 
these  days  of  steam  and  of  electricity,  when  thouglit 
multiplies  with  the  moments  to  infinity,  and  flashes 
over  the  latitudes  and  longitudes  with  the  speed 
of  lightning,  she  must  seize  upon  some  other 
agents  or  fulcrums  of  power  than  simply  her  pulpits 
and  her  present  literature  to  move  and  inspire  the 
world.  Were  she  fully  awake  to  her  responsibilities ; 
were  she  intelligently  and  conscientiously  earnest  in:- 
intensifying  her  rightful  influence,  and  in  extending, 
and  solidifying  her  moral  empire,  she  would  readily^ 
discover  the  means  which  are  now  presented  to  her 
for  the  fulfillment  of  this  work.  From  the  impulses 
of  free  thought,  and  the  necessities  of  free  govern- 
ment, the  common  school,  and  from  the  evolutions  of 
genius,  the  steam-press  with  its  daily  newspaper,  have 
appeared  as  the  most  potential  agents  for  the  dissem- 
ination of  popular  thought  and  inspiration. 

The  pulpit  and  the  library,  as  moral  educators  of 
the  masses,  are  of  the  old  dispensation.  These  are  of 
the  new — the  dispensation  of  universal  mental  quick- 
ening— of  restless,  independent  thought;  and  by  these 
the  destiny  of  our  political,  social,  and  religious  life 
is  to  be  mainly  determined.  As  these  are  inspired 
so  will  our  national  character  be  formed  and  our 
national  history  written. 

And  yet  the  Church,  practically,  is  insensible  to 
this.  She  seems  to  be  sleeping  with  contentment 
upon  the  old  flint-locks  of  the  Revolution,  while  the 
restless  age,  without  prophet  or  Messiah,  is  wielding 
the  Columbiads  and  rifle-guns  which  Providence  has 
expressly  prepared  for  the  successful  completion  of 
her  own  conquests. 


38  THE    BIBLE 

The  circumscribed  and  periodic  duties  of  the  sacred 
desk;  eccentric  expositions  of  divine  truth;  denomi- 
national aggrandizement  the  building  of  ostentatious 
altars ;  the  inauguration  of  fanatical  temperance  cru- 
sades ;  the  issue  of  feeble  weekly  sectarian  journals, 
and  the  effort  to  renew  races  and  civilizations  long 
since  effete  by  fulfillment  of  appointed  time,  seems  to 
fill  the  very  measure  of  her  ambition  and  her  hopes. 

An  effective  externality  is  seemingly  the  grand 
sum  of  her  desires.  Figuratively,  the  apostolic  zeal 
and  simplicity  of  teaching,  healing,  and  inspiring  by 
the  wayside,  and  in  the  chambers  of  the  poor  and 
lowly,  are  apparently  of  far  less  moment  than  are  the 
ostentatious  environments,  the  awe-inspiring  rites  and 
ceremonies  of  the  temple. 

When  she  will  arouse  to  a  consciousness  of  her 
responsibility,  and  with  a  fresh  baptism  and  a  broad- 
er vision  commence  a  new  era  of  struggle  with  anti- 
Christ,  striking  at  the  foundations  of  evil  rather  than 
at  results,  is  a  sealed  problem.  Judging,  however, 
from  her  present  secularistic  tendencies,  we  fear  that 
around  her  altars  must  first  sweep  cyclones  whose 
fury  will  not  only  threaten  her  own  safety  but  that  of 
the  Republic.  The  signs  of  the  times  significantly 
point  to  this.  It  requires  no  prophetic  ear  to  even 
now  catch  the  sobs  of  the  coming  storm. 

Materialism,  under  the  teachings  of  the  Pantheistic 
scientists;  politico- ecclesiasticism,  the  star  of  Papal 
hope  ;  imperialism,  the  ideal  polity  of  vulgar  affluence ; 
monopoly,  the  ambitious  aim  of  Jesuitical  wealth; 
agrarianism,  the  defined  and  settled  theory  of  the 
Communist;  free  -  love,  the  apotheosis  of  socialism  ; 
with  their  concomitants,  are  spreading  and  entrench- 
ing themselves   in  every  direction,  preparatory  to   a 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  39 

struggle  for  supremacy.  In  results,  the  mightiest 
conflict  of  all  certainty  of  ideas  is  surely  approach- 
ing— a  conflict  in  which  Christianity  and  republican 
government  upon  this  continent  will  either  become 
more  clearly  defined  and  more  deeply  rooted,  or  else 
will,  for  a  time  at  least,  relapse  into  simple  ideals  ; 
having  no  tangible  form  or  force  in  law. 

In  the  face  of  existing  facts,  this  crisis  should  not 
only  become  an  absorbing  desire  with  the  Church, 
but  its  approach  she  could  hasten ;  for  its  speedy  ad- 
vent is  the  grand  hope  of  constitutional  and  religious 
freedom.  Delay  can  only  increase  the  intensity  of 
the  struggle  and  the  chances  of  success. 

Material  prosperity  and  prolonged  rest  have  stricken 
the  Church  with  the  weakness  of  senility ;  and  there- 
fore some  great  struggle,  in  whose  surges  her  fortunes 
shall  tremble  and  vibrate  with  dread  uncertainty,  is  her 
first  and  greatest  need.  It  is  a  necessity  of  being, 
applicable  to  collective  as  well  as  to  individual  life, 
that  the  perfect,  the  ideal  good  shall  only  be  reached 
and  maintained  through  conflict  and  suffering.  The* 
faith  of  the  Church  has  ever  been  most  mighty,  her 
glory  most  resplendent,  when  the  foe  has  pressed 
most  heavily  upon  her  flanks.  It  was  only  when  the 
chariots  of  the  Egyptian  were  thundering  at  the  heels 
of  Israel  that  the  sea  parted  to  his  footsteps,  and  the 
*'  pillar  of  cloud  and  of  fire  "  stood  between  the  op- 
pressor and  the  freedman. 

It  was  because  of  impending  danger  to  the  Hebrew 
Church  that,  for  more  than  four  hundred  years,  the 
invisible  battalions  of  God  formed  its  imperial  guard. 
And  so  have  been  the  sublimest  periods  of  the  Church 
of  Christ  when  the  sword  and  the  fagot  have  most 
scourged   her  ranks ;  when   the  caves  and  the  fast- 


40  THE  BIBLE 

nesses  of  the  mountains  have  most  echoed  her  plaint-^ 
ive  chants  and  prayers.  These  were  the  days  of  her 
real  transfiguration ;  the  days  of  her  true  scriptural 
simplicity  and  of  her  greatest  spiritual  ardor.  Not: 
that  we  would  have  a  repetition  of  this  sad  history, 
for  this  was  the  sorrow  of  conditions  never  to  return 
— the  sorrow  of  a  rude  age,  of  a  numerical  weakness 
— a  discipline  necessary  to  the  deep  implanting  and 
final  growth  of  a  lofty  and  sturdy  faith.  But  we 
would  have  her,  in  these  days  of  her  material  plenti- 
tude  and  of  her  spiritual  poverty,  forced  into  some 
great  moral  conflict,  whose  uncertainties  would  startle 
her  dreams,  quicken  her  pulse,  sublimate  her  faith,, 
and  lead  her  into  closer  communion  with  her  celes- 
ial  allies. 

In  a  period  like  this,  civilization  and  free  law 
would  catch  a  new  inspiration,  and  march  upward 
with  colossal  strides  toward  grander  heights.  That 
the  penalties  of  neglected  duties  and  of  perverted  laws 
may  be  alleviated  the  Christian  element  of  the  na- 
tion, in  its  civil  capacity,  either  united  or  in  its  denom- 
inational character,  should  at  once  move  on  the  line 
of  the  aggressive,  and  take  position  at  the  great, 
points  of  moral  strength. 

In  the  military  campaigns  of  Napoleon,  aggression,, 
combined  with  celerity  of  action,  was  the  grand  char- 
acteristic that  gave  to  his  arms  victory  and  empire. 
Aggression  embodies  force  that  mere  numbers  do  not 
alone  possess.  This  should  be  a  leading  feature  in  the 
policy  of  the  Church.  Though  theoretically  peaceful, 
yet  she  should  become  aggressive,  and  move  without 
delay,  figuratively  with  her  hand  upon  her  sword-hilt, 
to  control  not  only  the  daily  press  of  the  nation,  but 
to  place  the  Bible  in  its  schools  as  a  text -book  of 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  41 

moral  and  political  inspiration.  Here  we  indicate  the 
great  work  of  the  future — the  grandest  of  the  age — 
and  point  to  a  battle-field  upon  which  the  Christian: 
Church,  in  her  individuality,  must  finally  carry  her 
standards,  though  it  be  in  the  face  of  relentless  storm 
and  opposition.  The  struggle  she  may  postpone,  but 
its  coming  is  inevitable ;  for  in  that  struggle  only  is 
now  hope  of  political  and  social  reform,  as  well  as 
that  of  her  own  regeneration.  The  fiery  crucible  is 
still  indispensable  in  the  reforming  and  refining  of 
nations,  of  the  Church,  and  of  the  individual  man. 
Surely  her  surpliced  bishops,  and  her  meek-mannered 
ministers  must  finally,  alike,  if  loyal  to  their  trusts, 
throw  off  their  robes  of  peace,  and,  war-clad  and  fear- 
less as  were  Luther,  Knox,  and  Wesley,  lead  in  strik- 
ing for  the  triumphs  of  a  national  conscience  and  a 
national  faith,  which  shall  give  consistency  to  our 
public  acts,  and  no  longer  contradict  our  professions 
of  Christian  ethics. 

The  preliminary  steps  should  be  a  unification  of 
evangelical  strength  for  all  public  measures  of  moral 
and  social  good ;  among  the  chief  of  which  should  be 
the  establishing  of  daily  newspapers  at  the  great  cen- 
tres of  population  and  of  influence,  of  such  a  char- 
acter and  at  such  a  cost  as  would  defy  all  competition, 
and  thereby  be  enabled  to  carry,  in  the  true  spirit 
of  the  missionary,  to  every  fire-side,  however  humble 
or  impoverished,  a  daily  resume  of  the  world's  enter^ 
prises,  industries,  charities,  aims,  triumphs  in  science 
and  in  faith,  as  well  as  to  inspire  and  aid  Labor  in  its 
unequal  struggle  for  competency  and  independence; 
leaving  the  history  of  the  passions  now  so  prominent- 
ly presented,  and  so  potent  in  the  work  of  demorali- 
zation, unwritten,  except  as  judicial  records.     This 


42 


THE  BIBLE 


is  entirely  feasible  if  earnestly  and  judiciously  under- 
taken. The  money  even  that  is  now  annually  ex- 
pended in  the  extravagant  construction  and  appoint- 
ments of  edifices  of  worship;  in  the  maintaining  of 
an  abortive  system  of  sectarian  journalism ;  in  the 
support  under  existing  circumstances  of  a  questiona- 
ble economy  of  foreign  missions ;  in  the  personal  ex- 
travagance of  professing  Christians,  would  alone  suc- 
cessfully establish  a  journalistic  influence  scarcely 
secondary  to  that  of  all  the  leading  dailies  of  the 
country  combined — certainly  an  influence  which,  if 
wielded  with  sagacity  and  fidelity,  would  send  an 
ethic  glow,  now  unfelt  and  unknown,  through  all  the 
arteries,  and  along  all  the  nerves  of  the  body  politic. 

The  "  Centennial  Fund  "  of  the  Methodist  Episco- 
pal Church  North  amounted  to  $5,000,000  —  a  sum 
suflicient  to  have  successfully  established  three  power- 
ful dallies,  either  of  which  might  have  possessed  a 
popular  influence  that  would  have  far  transcended 
that  of  the  great  "  Book  Concern  "  of  this  denomina- 
tion, with  its  thirty  cylinder  power-presses — combined 
even  with  the  25,000  preachers  and  1,000  instructors 
in  the  colleges  and  seminaries  of  this  sect. 

The  Baptists  now  contemplate  the  collection  of  a 
similar  fund ;  but  it  is  hoped,  if  successful,  the  moral 
and  social  education  of  the  masses,  especially  that 
element  in  which  Communism  is  striking  deep  and 
luxuriant  root,  and  which  forms  so  large  a  proportion 
of  the  numerical  and  vital  power  of  the  nation,  may 
be  liberally  provided  for  by  their  sect  in  the  estab- 
lishing of  a  powerful  daily  press. 

Moral,  social,  and  political  science  is  infinitely  of 
more  national  importance  than  theology,  rhetoric,  and 
the  Pagan  classics.      Teach  the    masses,  conjointly 


AND    ITS    INFLUENCE.  43 

with  the  rudiments  of  secular  education,  the  sanctity 
of  the  moral  law,  the  divinit}'  of  the  eleventh  com- 
mandment, and  political  economy,  and  we  lay  deep 
the  foundation  of  popular  sovereignty  and  build  about 
it  a  bulwark,  over  which  the  ambitions  of  a  secular- 
ized priesthood,  of  Jesuitical  monopolies,  of  political 
demagogues,  and  of  social  iconoclasts  can  never  pass. 
The  denominational  classes  parade  the  results  of 
their  sectarian  enterprises  in  self-commendatory  sta- 
tistics of  the  number  of  their  clergy,  their  theological 
schools,  their  libraries,  their  periodicals  and  tracts  ; 
but  what  are  all  their  pulpits,  their  seminaries,  their 
iixed  and  periodical  literature,  in  their  direct  popular 
influence,  compared  with  that  of  the  daily  press? 
While  their  voices  only  reach,  at  indefinite,  or  at  best 
at  weekly  or  semi-weekly  periods,  the  disciplined  and 
comfortable  thousands,  the  daily  press  may  reach,  not 
only  these,  but  all  the  unbridled  and  needy  millions. 
This  is  the  great  arch-apostle  of  our  century,  speak- 
ing with  infinite  tongues  of  infinite  power.  In  its 
nervous  and  eternal  syllables  is  embodied  a  force  more 
mighty,  if  free,  than  that  of  armies — a  force  in  whose 
flash,  crowns,  bayonets,  senates,  statutes,  creeds,  or- 
ganizations, and  men,  melt  and  pass  away.  Give  the 
*'  Nazarine"  the  daily  press,  and  the  fortress  is  gained 
whose  guns  command  the  world.  Rescue  it  from  its 
lawless  and  mercenary  condition,  sanctify  it  to  the  just, 
the  pure,  and  the  lofty,  and  we  not  only  encourage 
the  advance  to  the  political  front,  over  the  heads  of 
demagogues,  the  "  honest,  capable,  and  faithful,"  but 
we  embody  in  one  the  equivalent  of  all  the  diversified 
moral  and  intellectual  power  of  the  past  as  well  as  of 
the  present.  We  may  even  gather  up  from  sacred 
dust  into  single  quivers,  as  arrows  of  quenched  light, 


44  THE  BIBLE 

the  long  spent  forces  of  genius,  and  send  them  out 
again  in  perpetual  streams,  rekindled  and  reinspired, 
over  broader  and  vaster  circuits ;  making  the  Chry- 
sostoms  and  the  Abelards,  the  Luthers  and  the  Fene- 
lons,  the  Sydneys  and  the  Miltons,  the  Whitfields 
and  the  Chathams,  the  Masillons  and  the  Turgots, 
the  Adamses  and  the  Franklins,  speak  again,  in  grand- 
er and  more  intensified  periods,  to  grander  and  more 
intensified  audiences.  "  The  newspaper,"  said  Lord 
Mansfield,  "  will  write  the  Dukes  of  Northumberland 
out  of  their  titles  and  possessions,  and  the  country 
out  of  its  king."  "  Before  this  century  shall  have  run 
out,"  said  Lamartine,  "journalism  will  be  the  whole 
of  human  thought.  #*****  Xhe  ruling 
book,  possibly,  will  be  a  daily  newspaper."  The  finan- 
cial and  political  centers  of  all  Europe  thrill  as  sen- 
sitively in  response  to  the  leaders  of  the  Loftdon 
Times  as  do  the  magnets  of  our  planet  in  response 
to  the  solar  storm.  And  does  not  the  religious  world 
see  its  fearful  responsibility  here  involved  in  neglect- 
ing to  control  this  mighty  agent  of  social  and  politi- 
cal power — this  agent  by  which  civilization  and  all 
the  sacred  interests  of  the  race  are  to  receive  their 
ultimate  type — their  final  cast  ? 

Better  worship  beneath  humble  roof  and  beside  lowly 
altar,  and  know  that  through  our  zeal  and  our  sacrifices 
we  are  hewing  the  great  rough  block  of  sensual  hu- 
manity into  the  beauty  of  divine  proportion,  and 
gradually  bringing  into  being  the  grand  ideal  of  Chris- 
tian hope  and  of  popular  liberty. 

Ascendancy  gained  in  journalism,  then,  should 
follow  an  effort  to  restore  the  Bible  to  the  common 
schools.  But  here  we  approach  a  field  of  earnest  con- 
flict, a  field  upon  which  forces,  now  quietly  strength- 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE. 


ening  and  intensifying  at  the  foundations  of  society, 
will  finally  rally  for  supremacy.  What  the  arbitra- 
ment, however,  of  that  field  will  be  need  not  be  a 
question  of  doubt.  With  the  influence  of  the  Press 
and  the  inspiration  of  the  cause  no  friend  of  Christian 
civilization  and  of  popular  government  need  stumble 
in  his  conclusions,  or  bow  himself  in  fear.  I  am 
aware,  however,  that  there  exists,  even  with  some  of 
the  assumed  friends  of  the  Bible,  objections  to  its  in- 
troduction into  the  public  schools.  Influenced  by 
denominational  sympathies,  and  lacking  a  just  com- 
prehension of  the  political  necessity,  the  scope,  and 
the  national  pre-eminence  of  the  common  school,  they 
advise  against  its  introduction  there,  excusing  their 
sectarian  prejudice  and  their  virtual  disloyalty  to  the 
State,  as  well  as  to  the  Bible,  in  appeals  for  *'  inde- 
pendent "  or  denominational  schools.  While  others, 
.moved  by  fear  of  the  opposition  which  the  effort  of 
introduction  would  provoke,  are  led  to  tamely  submit 
to  its  exclusion,  choosing  peace  w4th  no  Bible  rather 
than  the  social  and  political  contests  which  would 
follow.  But  to  thus  yield  up  our  great  system  of  pub- 
lic instruction  into  the  hands  of  demagogues,  to  the 
control  of  hereditary  enemies  of  popular  government 
and  of  social  order,  without  a  struggle,  is  not  only  an 
act  of  cowardice,  but  a  crime  against  liberty ;  a  crime 
that  will  finally  bring,  alike  upon  Church  and  State, 
overwhelming  disaster. 

That  the  effort  would  invoke  strenuous  opposition 
we  have  no  doubt,  but  shall  we  refuse  to  attempt  so 
plain  a  duty  because  of  opposition  ?  Can  we  elect  in 
this  matter?  Is  not  the  introduction  of  the  Inspired 
Word  into  our  schools  a  necessity  which  we,  as 
-guardians  of  free  government,  must  accept  at  all  haz- 


46  THE    BIBLE 

ards  ?  Is  this  not  a  required  evidence  of  the  necessary 
moral  rectitude  essential  to  the  successful  mainte- 
nance of  self-government? 

By  legal  enactment  we  seek  to  establish  our  faith, 
to  lull  the  public  conscience,  and  to  dignify  the  na- 
tional character  by  engraving  "  In  God  we  trust " 
upon  our  coin,  and  by  incorporating  into  our  organic 
law  a  more  specific  declaration  of  our  faith.  But  is 
this  sufficient  ?  Would  it  not  be  more  consistent 
with  our  religious  assumptions  to  place  the  Bible  in 
our  schools,  and  thereby  seek  to  engrave  upon  the 
hearts  of  our  children  a  declaration  of  our  trust,  in 
lines  more  deep  and  more  imperishable  than  they  can 
be  upon  our  coin  or  our  organic  acts  ?  It  was  not 
sufficient  with  God  that  the  Hebrews  should  simply 
engrave  His  name  and  His  words  upon  their  door- 
posts and  their  gates ;  but  it  was  upon  the  hearts  of 
their  children  that  He  especially  designed  that  His 
statutes  should  be  written ;  for  it  was  here  that  He 
w^as  to  establish,  not  alone  Hebrew  government,  but 
to  lay  the  foundations  of  prophetic  civilization.  And 
so  should  w^e,  imitating  the  Jews  in  their  obedience, 
not  alone  seek  to  write  our  faith  upon  mere  gold  or 
parchment,  but  to  incorporate  it  into  our  system  of 
public  instruction,  and  thereby  figuratively  bind  it  as 
a  sign  upon  the  hands  of  the  national  childhood,  and 
as  frontlets  between  its  eyes. 

No  plea,  however  specious,  no  portrayal  of  danger, 
however  threatening,  can  be  of  sufficient  force  to  war- 
rant a  prohibition  of  the  use  of  the  Bible  in  the  pub- 
lic schools.  Its  presence  there  is  the  imperious  de- 
mand of  moral,  social,  and  political  progress.  Our 
system  of  common  schools  is  no  result  of  Pantheism, 
Paganism,  Vaticanism,  or  even  of  Judaism.     No  such 


• 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  47 

scheme  of  education  was  ever  born  of  these  mothers 
of  Anti-Christ.  Each  has  had  ages  of  empire.  Each 
has  stamped  its  genius  upon  the  centuries ;  and  yetr^- 
they  give  us  no  record  of  a  system  of  free  education 
for  the  great  laboring,  patient,  needy  masses.  This 
is  the  peculiar  offspring  of  the  Christianized  Ameri- 
can idea  of  social  and  political  necessity — that  grand 
idea  of  conscience  and  of  liberty  which  had  its  con- 
ception in  the  religious  inspirations  of  the  sixteenth 
century  —  embryonic  life  m  the  early  experiences  of 
the  Puritans,  and  birth  in  the  cabin  of  the  May/lower, 
No  priest  of  Jerusalem  or  of  Rome,  no  disciple  of 
Heroclitus  or  of  Lucretius,  no  forerunner  of  Voltaire, 
Hume,  or  of  Hegal  stood  sponsor  at  the  baptism  of 
our  cherished  system  of  schools.  None  but  the 
saintly  "  Pilgrim,"  with  his  Bible  and  his  "  hymns  of 
lofty  cheer,"  was  there  to  give  pledge  for  this  offering 
of  Christian  liberty.  And  why,  then,  should  we  yield 
to  the  dictates  of  these  foes  of  Christian  revelation, 
and  as  a  logical  historic  sequence  of  popular  govern- 
ment ?  What  principles  of  duty,  necessity,  or  expe- 
diency demand  this  ?  Are  our  institutions  so  deeply 
entrenched  that  we  can,  as  a  mark  of  republican  gen- 
erosity, for  any  reason,  safely  hand  them  over  to  the 
control  of  their  natural  enemies  ?  Or  can  we,  in  the 
role  of  the  demagogue,  afford,  even  for  a  season,  to 
barter  this  or  any  guaranty  of  our  liberties  for  place 
or  emolument  ? 

"Oh  !  not  yet 
Mayest  thou  embrace  thy  corselet,  nor  lay  by 
Thy  sword,  nor  yet,  O  Freedom  !  close  thy  lids 
In  slumber ;  for  thine  enemy  never  sleeps, 
And  thou  must  watch  and  combat,  till  the  day 
Of  the  new  Earth  and  Heaven."  Bryant. 

The  most  momentous  reasons  exist  why  the  Scrip- 
tures should  be  introduced  into  the  schools  as  a  text- 


48  THE    BIBLE 

book  of  ethics.  Never  since  the  great  flood  of  Gothic 
and  Vandal  life  which  rushed  over  the  Alps  in  the 
early  centuries  has  there  been  such  a  flow  of  peoples 
as  is  now  setting  in  upon  us  from  the  old  seats  of 
European  and  Asiatic  civilizations.  Irresistible  and 
ceaseless  is  this  tide  of  vitality  now  flowing  to  our 
shores,  with  all  its  crude  ideas  of  religion,  of  morals, 
and  of  government ;  vitiating  more  and  more  the 
republican  sentiment  of  the  nation,  as  each  succeed- 
ing wave,  sweeping  over  the  land,  leaves  in  its  broad 
continental  track  the  germs  of  new  life,  the  elements 
of  new  power.  The  historic  Roman  disappeared  be- 
neath the  great  northern  deluge  ;  because  he  not  only 
lacked  the  moral  power  to  resist  and  to  assimilate  the 
vigorous  barbarism  that  flowed  in  upon  him,  but  the 
means  to  secure  it.  So  is  the  historic  American  grad- 
ually losing  his  individuality  and  power  amidst  the 
great  deluge  of  the  east  and  the  west. 

With  this  type  came  liberty  ;  and  with  its  extinction 
liberty  will  expire,  unless  its  spirit  and  its  personality 
are  perpetuated  through  those  who  are  now  succeed- 
ing to  political  duty  and  responsibility.  Unlike  the 
Roman,  however,  we  possess  the  means  not  only  to 
resist,  but  to  assimilate  all  these  elements  of  antago- 
nism which  surround  us  with  such  gloomy  promise. 
With  the  Bible  inspiring  the  statute,  the  tribune,  the 
press,  and  the  school,  we  may  mold  all  this  mighty 
influx  of  Paganism,  Romanism,  Atheism,  and  Com- 
munism into  our  own  likeness  ;  making  it  a  part  of 
ourselves  in  the  hopes  and  perpetuity  of  the  Repub- 
lic. 

Can  any  doubt  this  ?  Can  any  doubt  the  power  of 
Christian  philosophy  in  resisting,  overcoming,  and 
iinally   assimilating   antagonistic   elements    to    itself 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  49 

when  faithfully  taught  and  exemplified  ?     If  so,  we 
'have  only  to  refer  to  its  early  struggles  and  final  tri- 
umphs   to   fully   comprehend    this  truth.     No  other 
proofs  are  wanted  to  establish  forever  its  irresistible 
•energy  as  an  agent  of  defense,  of  reform,  of  conquest, 
and  of  empire,  than  its  early  struggles  with,  and  its 
decisive  victories  over,  old-established  and  venerated 
■creeds  and  systems  of  philosophy,  with  which  it  first 
came  in  contact  when  only  exemplified  in  the  teach- 
ings and  lives  of  but  even   a  little  band  of  humble 
Galileans.     Old  and  deep  as  were  the  foundations  of 
the  ritualism  of  the  Jew,  lofty  and  unyielding  as  was 
the  intellectual  pride  of  the  Greek,  imperial  and  splen- 
did as  was  the  barbarism  of  the  Roman,  beautiful  and 
enslaving  as  was  the  mythology  of  the  classic  Pagan, 
these,  all  these,  were  shaken  and  overthrown  by  the 
gentle,  but  yet  irresistible  and  revolutionary  spirit  of 
that  philosophy  which  Jesus  so  meekly  taught  to  men, 
and  which  His  disciples  so  faithfully  expounded,  not 
only  to  the  Jew,  but  to  the  Gentile,  at  Athens,  at  Co- 
rinth, and  at  Rome.     And  its  modern  victories  are  no 
less  convincing  of  its  powers  than  are  those  of  its 
early  history.     It  may  sometimes,  in  subordination  to 
the  great  law  of  reaction,  appear  for  a  time  to  have 
lost  its  vitality  and  power  ;  but  like  the  eternal  flow 
of  the    tides,  inflow  follows  outflow,  and  each    suc- 
ceeding wave  lifts  the  social  life-line  higher  and  high- 
er, and  will  until  the  highest  summits  of  human  pos- 
sibilities are  reached,  and,  in  fulfillment  of  the  great 
drama,  the  finite  blends  with  the  shadow  of  the  Infi- 
nite. 

Napoleon  said  :  **  Alexander,  Caesar,  Charlemagne, 
and  myself  have  founded  empires  ;  but  upon  what 
does  the  creation   of  our  genius  rest  ?     Upon  force," 

4 


50 


THE  BIBLE 


he  replies.  "  Christ,"  he  continues,  "  founded  His  em- 
pire upon  love,  and  millions  at  this  hour  would  die 
for  Him.  I  see  kings,  potentates,  and  armies  arrayed 
against  Him;  but  with  Him  I  see  no  army  —  none 
but  a  mysterious  force — peaceful  men,  scattered  here 
and  there,  having  no  rallying-point  but  a  commork 
faith  in  the  mysteries  of  the  Cross.  I  die  before  my 
time,  and  my  empire  expires  with  me ;  but  the  King- 
dom of  Christ  survived  the  Crucifixion;  still  lives,  ex^ 
tending  its  scepter  over  the  earth." 

Our  success  in  assimilating  the  great  mass  of  this 
rapidly  inflowing  alien  element,  as  well  as  in  perpetuat- 
ing the  true  republican  spirit  with  the  native-born,  will 
be  mainly  determined  by  the  ethic  forces  we  employ  in 
our  educational  system.  If  our  agents  of  conversion 
and  of  perpetuation  are  wanting  in  the  requisite  power 
to  inspire  and  to  elevate  the  moral  sentiments,  then 
we  shall  fail  in  our  work.  But  if  we  bring  to  our  aid 
influences  which,  by  their  natural  adaptation  and  their 
spiritual  force,  incite  and  develop  the  emotional  na- 
ture into  pure  and  lofty  types,  as  well  as  stimulate 
the  understanding,  then  our  success  will  equal  our 
hopes.  And  here  exists  an  unfortunate  point  of  dif- 
ference among  even  the  stanch  friends  of  our  public 
schools.  While  some,  overlooking  the  need  of  Chris- 
tian ethic  culture  as  a  political  and  social  necessity,, 
maintain  that  a  system  of  public  instruction,  purely 
secular,  is  all  that  is  required  in  laying  the  foundation 
of  republican  citizenship,  others  contend  that  secu- 
lar studies,  alone,  possess  no  inherent  influence  es- 
pecially favorable  to  republican  sentiment ;  that  it  is- 
only  through  the  emotions,  guided  by  an  enlightened 
understanding,  that  we  can  build  up  a  strong  and 
systematic  republican  character.     Hence,  they  claim 


AND    ITS    INFLUENCE.  51 

that,  on  political  grounds  alone,  the  Bible,  so  prepo- 
tent in  its  power  over  the  heart  in  restraining  and  re- 
fining its  passions,  in  quickening  the  conscience,  and 
in  inspiring  the  mind  with  the  true  ideas  of  equity 
and  of  equality,  should  be  introduced  into  the  public 
schools  as  a  reading-book,  that  the  great  moral  defi- 
ciency which  exists  in  the  popular  character,  through 
the  negligence  or  recreancy  of  the  guardian,  may  be 
at  least  partially  supplied  by  the  State. 

That  the  position  of  the  latter  is  correct  we  have 
abundant  proof  It  is  not  the  merely  intellectually 
trained  that  have  proved  the  exclusive  champions  or 
the  most  sturdy  defenders  of  republican  principles* 
It  was  not  from  the  scholarly  and  courtly  ranks  of 
England  that  chiefly  came  the  most  strong  and  ardent 
supporters  of  the  commonwealth,  but  it  was  from  the 
fields  and  the  shops — from  the  industrial  ranks  of  the 
lowly  and  emotional  Puritans,  that  sprang,  as  if  by 
inspiration,  those  fiery  and  invincible  squadrons 'of 
republicanism.  It  was  not  from  scliools  of  classic 
learning  that  mainly  flowed  the  heroic  spirit  of  the 
American  Revolution,  but  it  was  from  the  counting- 
rooms,  the  workshops,  and  the  farms,  recruited  from 
common  schools  with  Bibles,  that  gathered  those 
untrained  battalions  who  sealed  with  unutterable  sor- 
rows their  devotion  to  liberty,  and  won  for  humanity 
its  first  substantial  victory. 

Russell  and  Sydney  are  conspicuous  among  the 
martyrs  of  English  liberty.  Their  republican -sym- 
pathies brought  them  to  the  scaffold.  And  the  first 
extenuation,  of  this  crime  against  human  rights  came 
from  the  halls  of  Oxford.  While  the  block  was  yet 
reeking  with  the  blood  of  these  martyrs  of  free  thought 
Oxford  University  proclaimed   to  the   world  that  the 


52  THE    BIBLE 

principles  for  which. these  men  died  were  '* impious; 
were  damnable — doctrines  fitted  to  deprave  the  man- 
ners and  corrupt  the  minds  of  men ;  to  promote  sedi- 
tion and  to  overthrow  states." 

Pure  intellect,  however  highly  cultivated,  untem- 
pered  with  Christian  philosophy,  is  inclined  to  inordi- 
nate self-  devotion  or  to  caste,  and  is,  therefore,  in- 
stinctively antagonistic  to  popular  sovereignty. 

The  American  Republic  struggled  into  life  in  the 
midst  of  a  brilliantly  intellectual  age  —  the  age  of 
Bentham  and  of  Herschell ;  of  d'Alembert  and  of 
Condillac ;  of  Kant  and  of  Lossing  ;  of  Goethe  and 
of  Schiller;  and  yet,  scarcely  any  great  intellect,  save 
Chatham,  Barre,  and  Burke,  rose  up  in  that  splendid 
period  of  philosophy,  poetry,  eloquence,  and  of  law, 
to  inspire,  even  with  hope,  the  founders  of  the  infant 
Republic.  The  ostentatious  reception  of  the  Ameri- 
can Ambassador  by  the  savans  and  literati  of  France, 
in  "1778,  was  the  result  more  of  national  prejudice 
against  England  than  from  true  love  of  republican- 
ism. The  kiss  of  Voltaire  and  of  Franklin,  as  sym- 
bolical of  political  sympathy,  in  the  presence  of  the  im- 
perial intellect  of  France,  was  dramatic,  overwrought, 
and  unnatural,  and  no  more  represented  a  unity  of 
political  inspiration  than  did  the  great  revolutions  of 
the  two  peoples.  Truly,  republics  have  ever  been 
born  of  the  heart,  christened  by  its  affections,  and 
defended  by  its  enthusiasm. 

The  public  school,  where  the  childhood  of  the  na- 
tion daily  gathers — where  the  great  majorities  of  com- 
ing power  meet  to  receive  the  first  lesson  of  civic  life 
— -is  the  most  effective  point  at  which  we  can  reach  the 
faith  and  the  conscience  of  the  future.  And  it  is  here, 
then,  that  the  Bible  should  be  placed  as  a  text-book 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  5S 

of  moral,  social,  and  political  inspiration.  Sabbath- 
schools  do  not  fully  meet  the  necessities  of  the  case, 
for  reasons  readily  assigned.  We  do  not  presume, 
however,  that  the  Bible  in  the  schools  would  at  once 
and  alone  work  out  the  great  problem  of  social  and 
political  science — would  alone  accomplish  all  for  civil 
and  religious  freedom.  Moral  and  civil  treason  would 
still  continue.  Tribunals  of  justice  and  prisons  would 
still  be  needed  as  necessary  adjuncts  of  our  present 
civilization.  For,  with  all  the  spiritual  and  moral 
appliances  within  human  reach,  the  upward  march  of 
the  race  is,  as  is  the  march  of  the  centuries,  percept- 
ible only  by  comparison  of  epochs  or  eras.  To  edu- 
cate  man  up  to  the  full  standard  of  the  Christian  ideal, 
when  statutes  of  force  shall  become  obsolete,  when 
individual  right  shall  find  impregnable  defense  in  the 
right  of  another,  is  a  work  of  ages  —  slow  in  its  pro- 
cesses, it  may  be,  as  is  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes. 
But  with  its  presence  there  the  pulse  of  the  nation 
would  beat  stronger ;  its  life  would  become  grander ; 
its  step  toward  higher  planes  would  be  more  sure  and 
steady ;  because,  with  the  Divine  Word  goes  out  an 
influence  which  mind,  particularly  in  its  formative 
period,  cannot  wholly  resist.  Silent  and  unostenta- 
tious as  the  light  in  its  operations  though  it  is,  still, 
few  hearts  there  are  that  can  pass  from  under  its  con 
tinned  influence  without  receiving  some  of  the  strokes 
of  its  divine  sculpturing,  or  some  of  the  touches  of  its 
divine  coloring. 

William  Tyndall  must  have  felt  this  when  laboriously 
translating  in  exile  the  Word  for  the  fatherland,  desir- 
ing that  it  might  be  given  even  to  every  plow-boy  of 
England.  Faber  felt  it  when  he  said,  "  The  poetry  and 
philosophy  of  the  Bible  live  on  the  ear  like  music  that 


54  THE  BIBLE 

never  can  be  forgotten."  Erasmus  realized  it  when 
he  wished  that  not  only  the  "  husbandman  at  the  plow, 
but  his  little  ones  at  the  cottage-fire,  might  sing  some- 
thing from  the  Gospels  and  the  Epistles*."  De  Quin- 
cey  was  conscious  of  it  when  he  said,  "  The  Script- 
ures which  I  read  in  childhood  ever  sway  me  as  mys- 
teriously as  music,  and  slept  on  my  memory  like  early 
dawn  upon  the  waters."  Burke,  Chatham,  Erskine, 
Otis,  Henry,  Ames,  Webster,  and  other  great  masters 
of  language,  early  understood  its  mysterious  power  in 
giving  resistless  charm  to  eloquence  and  to  argument. 
Elizabeth  Fry  had  faith  in  its  influence  over  the  adult 
as  well  as  youthful  criminal,  and  had  sublime  con- 
firmation of  it  when  in  the  English  prisons  she  recited 
its  tender  compassions,  its  sweet  reconciliations,  its 
inspiring  hopes,  and  awoke  within  their  gloomy  walls 
a  new  and  eloquent  life.  Gustavus,  the  knightly  hero 
of  Protestant  liberty,  fully  comprehended,  as  did  Crom- 
well, the  power  even  of  its  martial  influence,  when, 
with  his  unhelmeted  warriors,  on  the  eve  of  battle,  he 
would  reverently  plead  its  promises  of  help,  and  trust- 
ingly chant  the  hymns  of  its  inspiration. 

Freedom  by  the  Danube,  thrilled  with  divine  hope, 
beneath  the  influence  of  Revelation,  as  Kossuth, 
kneeling  amidst  the  graves  of  the  heroes  of  Ranoy- 
ina,  plead  with  inspired  lips  for  the  glory  of  the  fallen 
brave  and  the  cause  of  Hungarian  liberty. 

It  was  the  imperial  power  of  Christian  Revelation 
that  wrung  from  the  apostate  Julian  that  sublime  con- 
fession when,  upon  the  sands  by  the  Tigris,  flinging 
his  own  blood  toward  heaven,  he  exclaimed,  "  Gali- 
leean !  Galileean  !  Thou  hast  conquered !  "   . 

We  give  to  the  public  schools,  as  models  of  moral 
excellence,  of  diction,  of  pathos,  and  of  the  sublime. 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  55 

Milton,  Young,  Dwight,  Ruskin,  Webster,  Bryant, 
and  other  eminent  teachers ;  but  when  these,  as  eth- 
ical standards,  are  viewed  simply  as  reflexes  of  those" 
inimitable  lessons  of  the  "  humble  Nazarine,"  how 
quickly  do  they  lose  their  importance  and  take  infe- 
rior rank  in  the  realm  of  philosophy  !  What  weak- 
ness of  imagery  do  we  find  with  these  authors  when 
paralleled  with  that  which  arose  in  the  visions  of  John 
at  Patmos,  of  Ezekiel  by  the  Chebar,  and  of  Daniel 
by  the  Euphrates !  What  passionless  poetry  when 
placed  in  the  light  of  that  which  kindled  upon  the 
lips  of  Deborah,  of  Job,  of  David,  and  of  Isaiah  ! 
What  emotionless  pathos,  when  contrasted  with  that 
which  trembled  in  the  voice  of  the  prophet  by  the 
rivers  of  captivity,  or  when,  down  through  the  ages, 
lamenting,  he  saw  the  final  scattering  and  exile  of  his 
people. 

While  the  embodied  thoughts  and  emotions  of  hu- 
man teachers  may,  for  a  time,  charm  and  thrill  with 
their  magnetic  power,  they  quickly  become  spiritless 
and  inert  when  compared  with  the  written  inspirations 
of  Jehovah.  The  grandest  and  purest  philosophy, 
the  sublimest  and  most  impassioned  poetry,  the  bold- 
est and  most  startling  imagery,  the  loftiest  and  most 
enrapturing  diction,  the  tenderest  and  most  tearful 
pathos  which  ever  thrilled  the  human  heart,  come 
from  the  pens  of  God's  lawgivers — from  the  lips  of 
God's  prophets-^from  the  harps  of  God's  poets.  It 
is  at  these  sources  of  wondrous  power  that  the  great 
statesmen,  orators,  bards,  and  soldiers  of  reform  have 
ever  caught  their  inspiration,  have  ever  kindled  the 
torch  with  which  they  have  spanned  the  heavens  with 
the  broadest  and  brightest  arches  of  promise.  And 
it  is  here  that  the  great  masters  of  immortal  art  have 


S5,;,   .  THE    BIBLE 

received  their  divinest  inspirations  of  the  beautiful,  the 
grand,  the  tragic,  and  the  awful. 

Mythology  was  the  inspiration  of  Greek  art ;  hence,, 
its  apotheosis  was  simply  beauty  of  form  and  fidelity 
of  expression.  But  the  Bible  inspired  the  genius  of 
the  Renaissance,  whose  art  creations  embody  not  only 
beauty  of  line  and  of  sentiment,  but  ideas,  whose  for- 
ces thrill  the  universe,  and  whose  sweep  touches  the 
very  heart  of  the  Infinite. 

If  the  "  Minerva  "of  Phidias,  the  ''  Venus  "  of  Prax- 
itiles,  the  "  Lance  Bearer  "  of  Polycletus,  are  perfec- 
tions of  ideal  beauty,  the  marbles  of  Ghiberti,  of  Do- 
notello,  and  of  Canova,  are  but  little  less.  But  the 
infinite  grandeurs  and  transcendencies  of  Michael 
Angelo,  the  sublimities  and  pathos  of  Raphael,  the 
divine  harmonies  and  purity  of  Coreggio,  in  their 
illustrations  of  the  Messianic  drama,  have  no  parallel 
in  the  grandest  of  Pagan  art.  Toby  Rosenthal  at 
one  time  threw  a  portion  of  the  artistic  world  into 
ecstacies  in  materializing  "  Elaine" — a  conception  of 
Tennyson  ;  but  this  young  Jewish  master  might  call 
up  with  his  magic  pencil,  from  the  grand  old  poetry 
of  his  own  race,  conceptions  and  ideals,  in  the  light 
of  which  "  Elaine  "  would  pale  like  a  star  at  midday. 
When  this  novel  work  of  Rosenthal's  shall  have  beea 
forgotten,  the  sacred  illustrations  of  even  Gustave 
Dore  will  still  live  to  inspire  and  rap  the  hearts  of 
men. 

We  read  of  the  great  lyric  power  of  the  old  Pagan, 
masters  ;  but  critics  decide,  that  while  the  cultivated 
music  of  the  most  distinguished  of  these  was  full  of 
harmony  and  of  tender  melody,  it  was  yet  effeminate,, 
and  lacked  vastly  the  variety  of  air  and  of  modulation,, 
the  pathos,  the  power,  and  the  grandeur  of  that  of  the 


AND    ITS    INFLUENCE. 


Christian.  The  celebrated  names  of  Hyagni^ 
Timotheus,  and  of  Pindar,  rendered  in  the  temples 
at  the  zenith  of  Greek  glory,  deserve  no  comparison 
with  the  sublime  oratorios  of  Handel,  of  Haydn,  of 
Mozart,  or  of  Gibbons.  These  choral  symphonies, 
upon  which  so  many  millions  in  emotion  have  again 
and  again  swept  into  communion  with  the  angelic 
choirs,  could  have  had  no  creation  except  by  inspira- 
tion of  the  Bible. 

Emerson  says  Milton  is  forerun  by  Homer,  Virgil, 
and  Tasso  ;  that  without  these  precursors  there  would 
have  been  no  *'  Paradise  Lost."  But  Emerson  here 
is  superficial ;  dealing  simply  with  the  anatomy  of 
poetry.  Its  spirit  glows  now,  beyond  the  limit  of  his 
observation.  Had  there  been  no  Iliad,  no  -^neid,  or 
no  Jerusalem  Delivered,  "  Paradise  Lost "  would  not 
have  been ;  for  it  was  an  inevitable  epic  creation  of  the 
Inspired  Word — a  grand,  irrepressible  poetic  out-burst 
of  the  faith  of  the  Christian  centuries.  The  fore- 
runners of  Milton  were  the  Hebriac  prophets  and  the 
Messianic  revelators.  And  these  will  ever  furnish 
epic  and  dramatic  genius  its  most  seraphic  concep- 
tions and  its  most  imperishable  models. 

Milton  declared  that  "  no  songs  were  comparable 
with  the  songs  of  the  Bible,  and  no  orations  equal  to- 
the  orations  of  the  prophets." 

Sir  William  Jones  thought  the  "  Scriptures  contain- 
ed more  sublimity  and  more  exquisite  beauty  than, 
can  be  collected  from  all  other  books." 

The  learned  and  eloquent  Herder  said,  "  The  poetry 
of  the  Bible  is  the  most  thrilling  and  sublime  of  all 
poetry." 

Erasmus  says,  "  Paul,  at  the  close  of  the  fourth 
Chapter  of  Romans,  is  more  eloquent  than  Cicero." 


58  THE    BIBLE 

Goethe  pronounced  the  book  of  Ruth  "  the  loveli- 
est epic  idyl   that  has  come  down  from  any  age." 

Humbolt  asserted  that  "  The  Hebrew  description 
of  nature  was  unrivaled,  and  the  104th  Psalm  the 
sublimest  panorama  of  the  universe." 

Carlyle  remarks  that "  the  book  of  Job  is  the  grand- 
est thing  ever  written — a  noble  book  with  sublime 
sorrow  —  sublime  reconciliations ;  the  oldest  melody 
of  the  heart  of  manhood,  *  *  *  ^  *  so  soft,  and  great 
as  the  Summer  midnight — as  the  world  with  its  seas 
and  stars." 

"  The  elder  Pitt  recognized  the  Bible  as  *'  the  crite- 
rion of  political  equity  ;  as  the  highest  instrument  of 
popular  appeal  when  tyranny  violated  constitutional 
right ;  and  in  it  found  justification  for  revolution  when 
public  liberty  was  assailed." 

Burke  acknowledged  the  power  of  the  Bible  in 
^'  inspiring  public  energy,  and  the  spirit  of  popular 
liberty."  And,  upon  the  authority  of  his  biographer, 
it  was  *'  from  its  pages  that  he  imbibed  that  sublime 
morality,  and  gathered  that  rich  imagery,  apt  illustra- 
tions, and  lofty  diction,"  which  have  made  his  orations 
classic  and  immortal. 

Erskine  said, "  The  principles  taught  by  the  Bible 
lay  at  the  foundation  of  English  laws  ;  and  that  under 
the  auspices  of  the  Inspired  Word  only  had  the  lost 
and  subverted  liberties  of  mankind  been  re-asserted." 

John  Stuart  Mill,  that  obdurate  and  subtle  skep- 
tic, in  a  candid  moment,  admits  that  what  '*  Christian 
Revelation  lacks  in  direct  strength  is  more  than  com- 
pensated by  the  greater  truth  and  rectitude  of  the 
morality  it  sanctions." 

Guizot  writes  :  "  The  nations  who  are  conquering 
the  world  by  mind  and  strength  derive  their  mission 
and  their  source  of  power  from  the  Bible." 


AND    ITS   INFLUENCE. 


Victor  Hugo  says:  "England  made  Shakspeare, 
and  the  Bible  made  England." 

Samuel  Adams    declared    "The   Holy  Word    the- 
only  infallible  guide  in  morals  and  religion  —  the  pal- 
ladium of  the  rights  of  conscience,  of  liberty,  and  of 
happiness." 

Out  of  the  "  great  idea  of  God's  infinite  attributes, 
as  revealed  in  His  Word,"  Theodore  Parker,  looking 
down  the  vista  of  time,  saw  "  rise  in  beauty  the  ideal 
home,  state,  nation,  world." 

Webster  said  :  "  The  first  principles  of  our  Govern- 
ment are  the  truths  of  Divine  Revelation." 

Novalis  holds  that  "  The  Christian  religion  is  the 
root  of  all  democracy,  and  the  highest  fact  in  the 
rights  of  man." 

Goldwin  Smith  says :  "  The  progress  of  nations 
and  individuals  follows  in  exact  proportion  in  which 
they  approach  the  gospel  morality ;"  and  that  it  was 
"  from  no  other  source  than  Christian  Revelation  that 
was  derived  that  spirit  *  *  which  ^  *  sent  forth,  on 
a  crusade  for  the  freedom  and  happiness  of  man,  the 
best  soldiers  of  the  revolutionary  armies  of  France  — 
those  of  whom  Hoche  and  Marceau  were  the  gentle, 
brave,  and  chivalrous  types." 

Even  Rousseau  tells  us,  "  The  majesty  of  the  Scrip- 
tures astonishes ;  their  sanctity  enraptures.  The 
writings,"  he  says,  "  of  the  philosophers,  with  all  their 
pomp  and  parade,  are  trivial  when  compared  with  the 
sacred  volume."  "  Is  it  possible,"  he  asks,  "  that  a 
work  as  simple,  and  yet  as  sublime,  should  be  the  work 
of  men  ?  Is  it  the  style  of  an  enthusiast  or  a  sectary, 
inflated  with  ambition  ?  The  maxims,  how  sublime  ! 
*  *  the  discourses  of  the  Great  Teacher,  how  wise 
and  profound ! " 


60  THE    BIBLE 

And  now  are  not  these  testimonies  sufficient,  inde- 
pendent of  intrinsic  evidences,  to  lead  us  to  accept 
the  Inspired  Writings  as  suitable  for  popular  use  in 
our  schools  ?  If  the  influence  of  the  Bible  is,  as  it 
is  proven  to  be  by  individual  experience  and  the  civil 
and  social  history  of  advanced  peoples,  favorable  to 
good  morals,  intellectual  improvement,  industrial  ac- 
tivity, frugal  habits,  just  laws;  if  its  truths  awaken  in 
the  soul  the  spirit  of  the  humane,  the  love  of  the  beau- 
tiful, the  noble,  the  heroic,  and  the  sublime  —  why 
object  ?  Is  this  not  the  ideal  type  ?  Has  any  other 
system  of  religion  or  of  morals  developed  a  nobler 
manhood,  awakened  loftier  hopes  or  holier  ambitions; 
inspired  diviner  equities  or  sweeter  charities  ?  If  so, 
when  and  to  whom  has  it  been  given  ?  We  travel 
back  through  the  generations,  and  find  superiority 
with  those  only  who  have  marched  down  the  periods 
in  the  light  of  God's  Revelation. 

In  plea  of  submission  to  the  removal  of  the  Bible 
from  the  public  schools  some  affect  to  believe  in  the 
sufficiency  of  the  home,  the  church,  and  the  school 
of  the  sectarian,  to  give  the  nation  its  required  moral 
sentiment  But  in  this  a  fatal  error  is  committed  ; 
for  the  reason,  the  homes,  the  churches,  and  the  schools 
toward  which  we  can  now  turn  with  confidence,  but 
feebly  represent  the  grand  aggregate  of  social,  politi- 
cal, and  numerical  power — are  but  mere  rivulets  com- 
pared with  the  mighty  flood  that  is  sweeping  on  with 
the  Republic  into  the  future. 

Gold,  luxury,  ecclesiasticism,  and  infidelity  have  so 
far  impaired  the  moral  and  religious  sense  of  the  na- 
tion that  the  model  home,  church,  and  school  is  fast 
becoming  local  and  exceptional;  soon,  seemingly,  to 
be  scattered  only  here  and  there,  like  the  retirements 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  61 

of  the  recluse  of  the  Middle  Ages.  But  even  though 
there  did  not  exist  this  disparity  of  moral  and  numer- 
ical force,  there  is  present  a  serious  defect  in  the  prop- 
osition to  place  our  children  under  the  instruction  of 
the  religious  sectary  and  dogmatist,  as  all  experience 
shows.  It  is  an  experiment  that  has  even  proved  in 
the  end  disastrous  to  the  purity  of  faith  and  of  con- 
science;  especially,  whenever  the  love  of  power,  or 
when  wealth  and  luxury,  as  now,  have  secularized  the 
Church.  The  tendencies  of  the  reachings,  then,  are 
politically  pernicious  and  subversive  of  popular  in- 
dependence. 

Collyer,  Schermerhorn,  Swing,  and  Cardinal  Mc- 
Closkey,  religious  exponents  of  more  than  six  millions 
of  our  people,  would  exclude  the  Bible  from  the  public 
schools,  and  place  its  exposition  in  the  hands  of  the 
clergy,  because  it  is  only  here,  they  assume,  that  its 
truths  can  be  rightfully  interpreted. 

To  the  student  of  history  and  of  the  human  heart 
these  distinguished  public  utterances,  at  this  time 
of  increasing  ostentation  and  of  declining  republican 
simplicity  and  virtue,  are  significant  and  portentious, 
and  should  lead  us  to  guard  with  jealous  care  against 
the  civil  encroachments  of  the  Church.  The  argu- 
ments of  these  advocates  of  clerical  influence  and 
authority  clearly  indicate  a  desire  for  the  restoration 
of  the  old  regime  of  absolutism,  at  least  in  matters 
of  faith  and  of  conscience.  Freedom  of  individual 
will  and  thought  in  spiritual  affairs  is  still  an  inter- 
dicted privilege  with  the  ecclesiastic. 

The  Christian  citizen,  however,  notwithstanding 
•clerical  authority,  needs,  neither  for  himself  nor  his 
child,  the  aid  of  any.  interpreter  to  comprehend  the 
essential  truths  of  the  Bible.     These  are  given  us  in 


62  THE  BIBLE 

the  plain  text  of  the  Decalogue,  the  Beatitudes,  the 
Universal  Prayer,  the  xA^tonement,  and  the  Resurrec- 
tion, in  language  more  explicit  and  effective  than 
they  can  be  through  the  mediumship  of  the  school, 
man,  or  any  commentator.  Like  the  rigid  and  self- 
reliant  Puritan,  from  whose  foot-prints  sprang  free 
laws  spontaneously,  as  flowers  beneath  tropic  suns, 
we  need  no  teacher  but  the  Divine  Spirit,  no  Con- 
fessor but  the  Father,  no  liturgy  but  the  Bible.  The 
true  Church  can,  in  spirit,  exist  without  preacher, 
prelate,  or  Pope ;  and  it  is  of  such  only,  in  fact,  that 
the  true  Republic  rises  and  augments  in  grandeur 
and  power. 

And  the  liberalist,  as  well  as  the  strict  construc- 
tionist, who  affects  to  believe  that  our  organic  laws, 
Federal  and  State,  prohibit  Bible  reading  in  the 
schools  on  the  ground  of  sectarian  influence,  also  falls 
into  error ;  for  the  reason  that,  while  it  is  true  the  peo- 
ple have,  in  their  fundamental  laws,  provided  against 
religious  tests  in  official  qualifications  and  the  legis- 
lative establishing  of  religious  organizations,  they,  at 
the  same  time,  expressly  recognize  in  their  Bills  of 
Rights  or  Constitutions  the  cardinal  truths  of  Divine 
Revelation  as  the  moral  foundation  of  government. 
While  they  have  wisely  and  jealously  guarded  against 
the  encroachments  of  the  Church  or  of  sectarianism 
upon  the  rights  of  conscience  and  of  the  ballot,  they 
have  in  most  of  the  States,  especially  in  the  "  Old 
Thirteen,"  plainly  recognized  in  their  organic  Acts, 
as  the  standard  of  faith  and  ethics,  the  Christian  and 
Hebrew  Scriptures.  It  was  not  against  the  reading 
of  the  Bible  in  the  schools  that  the  fathers  made  con- 
stitutional provisions,  but  against  the  encroachments 
of  ecclesiasticism,   that  undying  vampire  of  liberty 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  63 

— that  power  which  had  so  long  enthralled  the  intel- 
lect and  the  conscience  of  the  race. 

The  evidence  of  this  rests  in  the  fact  that,  during 
the  whole  of  the  colonial  period  and  the  first  half- 
centur}''  of  the  national,  the  use  of  the  Bible  in  the 
public  schools  was  felt  to  be  a  necessary  feature  of 
popular  education;  so  much  so  as  to  assume  the 
character  and  force  of  common  law.  Some  of  the 
colonies  even  legislated  it  into  the  schools ;  and  the 
Congress  of  1777,  as  well  as  that  of  178 1,  on  account 
of  its  "  universal  and  great  importance,"  as  expressed 
by  one  Congressional  Committee,  did  not  deem  it 
unworthy  of  their  official  attention  and  support. 

From  the  moment  that  the  spirit  of  American  liber- 
ty began  to  stir  in  the  hearts  of  a  "  poor  people  "  in 
the  north  of  England — from  the  hour  it  covertly  fled 
from  ecclesiastical  and  civil  persecution  across  the 
heaths  of  Lincolnshire,  down  the  Humber  and  out 
upon  the  North  Sea — to  the  time  when  it  had  grandly 
embodied  itself  upon  a  new  continent  in  the  statutes 
of  a  great  and  free  people,  the  Bible  was  its  standard 
of  faith ;  its  supreme  authority  of  moral  appeal ;  its 
inspiration  of  law.  And  to-day,  in  letter  and  in 
spirit,  running  through  bills  of  rights,  preambles, 
constitutions,  judicial  oaths,  and  executive  procla- 
mations, it  forms  the  religious  and  ethical  standard  of 
the  nation — a  standard  which,  not  only  the  native- 
born,  but  the  alien,  be  he  Christian  or  Pagan,  Jew  or 
Mohammedan,  is  peculiarly  bound  by  the  most  sa- 
cred obligations,  as  a  recipient  of  the  benefits  of  asy- 
lum, of  the  privileges  of  free  citizenship,  of  the  rights 
of  manhood,  to  accept,  formally  at  least,  with  respect- 
ful consideration  and  grateful  deference. 


64  THE  BIBLE 

It  is  accepted  by  the  political  philosopher  as  axiom- 
atic that  without  popular  morality  there  can  be  no 
substantial  popular  government ;  and  as  it  is  also  an 
established  truth  that,  without  a  recognition  of  God 
and  His  moral  government  as  revealed  in  the  Script- 
ures, there  can  be  no  sound  morality,  it  logically  fol- 
lows, that  Scriptural  readings  in  our  schools  are  not 
only  constitutionally  consistent,  but  strictly  legal.  It 
is  the  plea  only  of  the  sophist,  who  brings  the  charge 
of  sectarianism  against  the  reading  of  the  Bible  in 
the  American  public  schools  ;  for  it  is  plainly  written 
in  legislative  Act,  and  in  national  custom,  that  its  phi- 
losophy forms  the  moral  woof  and  warp  of  our  politi- 
cal faith  and  our  entire  organic  law  —  that  in  spirit, 
Christianity,  by  constitutional  and  conventional  recog- 
nition, is  the  established  faith  of  the  State ;  and  that 
the  Bible,  as  the  text-book  of  that  faith,  is  the  standard 
of  national  ethics.  Therefore,  critically  considered, 
it  is  the  Atheist,  the  Jesuit,  the  rigid  ecclesiastic — 
hereditary  enemies  of  a  popular  Bible  and  of  popular 
government,  who  are  the  sectarians  in  fact,  and  against 
whom  their  own  charge  strictly  rests. 

To  declare  the  simple  reading  of  the  Bible  in  the 
schools,  or  the  chanting  there  of  the  Psalms,  or  the 
Lord's  Prayer — that  sublime  ''  Litany  of  nations  " — 
sectarian,  is  the  acme  of  absurdity,  is  the  subterfuge 
of  a  narrow  and  jealous  dogmatism,  and  can  only  be 
pronounced  by  him  whose  heart  has  never  yet  glow- 
ed in  the  full  light  of  either  written  or  unwritten  rev- 
elation, nor  truly  thrilled  beneath  the  touch  of  their 
spiritual  forces. 

And  yet  we  hear  those  in  our  midst  assuming  to 
have  been  called  of  God  to  expound,  defend,  and  to 
scatter  among  men  the  truths  of  His  Word,  so  dark- 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  Of) 

ened  in  comprehension,  or  so  recreant  to  duty,  as  to 
willingly  withhold  it  from  the  great  needy  masses  by 
such  construction  of  the  letter  and  spirit  of  our  or- 
ganic laws  as  to  render  its  use  in  our  schools  osten- 
sibly a  violation  of  civil  and  religious  rights.  In  their 
professed  and  dramatic  zeal  for  religious  and  politi- 
cal liberality  they  would  not  only  remove  from  pop- 
ular reach  the  very  foundation  of  the  faith  they  pre- 
tentiously  teach,  but  in  fact  the  moral  foundation  of 
the  government  itself.  Out  of  a  pretended  sense  of 
equity,  and  an  assumed  Christian  deference  to  the 
prejudices  of  the  Pagan,  the  Infidel,  the  Jewish,  and 
the  Red  Republican — in  their  extreme  catholic  desire 
to  bend  and  accommodate  our  institutions  and  our 
customs  to  the  religious,  social,  and  political  views 
of  their  inconoclasts  of  liberty,  they  willingly  subvert 
the  meaning  of  the  most  plain  and  sacred  provisions 
and  influences  of  fundamental  law.  They  anxiously 
make  concessions  in  the  name  of  liberty,  but  not  to 
those  who  have  established  and  maintained  it;  but 
rather  to  those  who,  in  every  period  of  their  power, 
have  trodden  down  with  Gothic  fierceness  the  proph- 
ets and  Messiahs  of  freedom. 

Instead  of  a  wise  and  just  tolerance  in  the  exercise 
of  republican  liberty,  these  men  seem  drunken  with 
an  excess  of  the  sentiment ;  or  else  but  express  a 
venal  ambition  for  popularity,  or  for  power  and  its 
forms,  which  sickens  over  the  virtues  and  simplicities 
of  republicanism.  If  republican,  their  inconsistency  is 
only  equaled  by  that  6f  the  statesman  whose  rhetori- 
cal fastidiousness  led  to  more  concern  for  the  cadence 
of  a  period  than  for  the  fall  of  a  commonwealth." 

As  additional  evidence  of  clerical  drift,  we  here 
call   attention  to  4  virtual  indorsement   of  Collyer, 


66  THE  BIBLE 

Schermerhorn,  Swing,  and  McClosky,  from  a  source 
which  we  might  least  expect.  At  the  last  anniver- 
sary of  the  "  Conference  Educational  Society  of  the 
Methodist  Episcopal  Church  North,"  of  California, 
its  Vice-President  gave  official  utterance  to  the  fol- 
lowing language :  He  says:  "  It  is  my  candid  opinion 
•that  our  public  schools  must  eventually  be  Bibleless 
and  prayerless.  So  long  as  all  do  not  believe  in 
Christ  and  the  Scriptures,  I  do  not  see  how  we  can 
stand  by  our  principles  as  Americans,  and  yet  force 
people  to  hear  the  Bible  read  as  the  Word  of  God. 
In  the  interests  of  Christianity,  I  advise  that  Bible 
reading  '''-■  ^  ^  ^  be  discontinued  in  the  public 
schools,  when  persistent  objection  is  made  *  *  '^  * 
by  lawful  patrons." 

Such  is  the  language  of  L.  L.  Rogers,  Vice-Presi- 
dent of  the  "  Conference  Educational  Society  of  the 
Methodist  Episcopal  Church  North,"  of  California— 
an  expression  of  sentiment  remarkable  for  two  reasons : 
First,  because  it  is  tacitly  an  official  declaration  of  a 
loss  of  faith,  by  a  prominent  body  of  Protestant  cler- 
gymen, in  the  progressive  energies  of  Christianity. 
Second,  because  it  is  an  unequivocal  acknowledgment 
of  hopeless  defeat  in  the  maintaining  of  a  traditional 
feature  of  the  American  system  of  public  instruction 
' — an  unconditional  surrendering  to  the  enemy  of  one 
of  the  great  moral  guaranties  of  our  government. 

To  analyze  the  opinion  of  this  clerical  representa- 
tive,  and  weigh  it  by  the  old,  the  heroic  standai*d  of 
American  faith,  as  w^ell  as  by  the  orthodox  standard 
of  true  Methodism,  we  are  mpre  convinced  than  ever 
that  Christianity  with  us  is  losing  its  heroism ;  is 
becoming  formalized,  and  that  Gladstone  was  correct 
when  he  lately  said :  "  The  marked  want  of  the  Church 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE.  67 

to-day  is  the  want  of  great  men  as  leaders  " — men,  we 
will  add,  who  have  a  supreme  faith  in  God,  in  His 
Word,  and  in  His  providence  —  men  who  have  the 
nerve  and  the  fidelity  to  '  stand  by  principle,'  though 
"  all  do  not  believe  in  Christ  and  the  Scriptures  "  — 
men  who,  discerning  the  indissoluble  relations  be- 
tween the  Bible  and  free  government,  are  ready  to 
labor,  at  any  cost,  to  interweave  its  ethics  and  its 
republican  sentiments  into  the  primary  education  of 
the  masses. 

Ordained  expositors  of  the  Bible  may  recommend 
its  exclusion  from  the  public  schools,  and  thereby 
practically  contradict  their  assumption  of  faith  in  its 
divinity,  its  philosophy,  and  its  prepotent  influences  ; 
but  they  may  as  well  arouse  themselves  first  as  last  to 
the  overshadowing  fact  that  a  crisis  is  approaching 
upon  this  question,  in  which  they  must  either  advance 
and  take  a  more  consistent  stand,  or  retreat  and  make 
a  more  consistent  profession.  The  prophecy  of  "  com- 
ing revolution"  is  no  idle  dream.  He  who  can  not  hear 
its  onward  tread  is  deaf  to  the  footsteps  of  the  future. 

The  re-establishing  of  the  early  custom  of  reading 
the  Bible  in  the  schools,  and  the  rescue  of  our  system 
of  public  instruction  from  anti-republican  influences, 
is  to  be  a  leading  question  of  the  near  future ;  destined 
to  force  to  the  front,  unmasked,  every  element  of  our 
national  life,  and  lead  to  a  more  satisfactory  solution 
of  the  American  idea  of  government  and  of  govern- 
mental auxiliaries. 

The  Bible  in  the  schools  is  a  question  we  cannot 
evade  if  we  would.  It  involves  principles  which  are 
essential  and  vital  to  liberty ;  and,  as  a  result,  it  is  now 
reassuming  its  early  national  importance  —  is  again 
irresistibly  crowding  itself,  as  if  by  divine  necessity, 


68  THE    BIBLE 

upon  our  serious  attention.  No  escape  from  finally 
meeting  it  can  be  made,  either  behind  the  subterfuge 
of  "  independent  schools,"  as  recommended  by  the 
sectarian  or  the  timid,  or  through  the  specious  plea 
of  illiberalism,  as  assumed  by  the  infidel  or  the  secu- 
larist. The  limit  is  being  approached,  beyond  which 
"compromise"  becomes  an  empty  term,  and  timidity, 
indifference,  or  infidelity  virtually  become  political 
treason. 

To  relinquish  our  hold  to  any  essential  extent  upon 
the  public  school,  and  substitute  for  it  the  "  independ- 
ent," would  ultimately  be  fatal,  inasmuch  as  it  not 
only  involves  finally  a  division  of  the  school  funds, 
but  would  increase  and  intensify  sectarian  prejudice, 
sectionalize  the  national  sympathies  and  aims,  and 
thereby  weaken  the  bonds  of  public  unity. 

Our  common  schools,  with  common  support,  with 
common  text-books,  and  with  a  common  faith,  would 
become,  finally,  bonds  of  union,  strong  and  binding 
evfen  as  is  the  Constitution. 

It  becomes  us  to  meet  this  question  boldly,  and 
with  no  offers  of  compromise — determined  to  main- 
tain inviolate  the  original  idea  and  faith  of  the  fa- 
thers in  the  management  of  our  common  schools. 
It  seems  incomprehensible  that  men  who,  by  their 
habits  of  thought  and  professions  of  faith,  ought  to 
understand  the  political  as  well  as  moral  influences 
of  the  Bible  —  in  fact,  its  utter  indispensability  to 
popular  government — should  be  found  willingly  with- 
holding from  the  publip  school  this  guaranty  of  civil 
and  religious  freedom.  But  such  are  the  incongrui- 
ties of  the  times.  We,  however,  rest  in  the  faith 
that  every  great  emergency  involving  sacred  public 
interests  calls  up,  at  the  right  hour,  its  hero  or  its  he- 


AND    ITS    INFLUENCE.  69 

roes,  to  inspire  and  to  lead.     So,  in  the  coming  con- 
flict of  Bible  or  no  Bible  in  the  public  schools,  of 
national  loyalty  to  the   Revealed  Law  of  God,  or  na- 
tional apostasy,  we  are  sure  that,  in  the  fullness  of 
time,  regardless  of  secular  or  ecclesiastical  opinion  or 
decree,  the  spirit  embodied    will  come,  which  shall 
lead  the    Republic  to  a   higher  and  a  grander  life. 
Melancholy  as  is  the  reflection,  it  is  nevertheless  true 
that  it  is  mainly  through  the  defective  judgment,  apa- 
thy, or  apostasy  of  the  representatives   of  religious 
sentiment  that  our  youth  are  now  going  forth  to  as- 
sume the  sacred  trusts  of  citizenship  with  no  higher 
inspiration,  beyond  the  uncertain  moral  influences  of 
secular  education,  than  that  of  the  cold  legalism  of 
the  materialist;  the  narrow  dogmas  of  the  ecclesias- 
tic ;  the  sensuous  tenets  of  the  spiritist;  the  lawless 
creed  of  the  communist — antagonistic  forces,  in  which 
are  inherent  and  expanding  the  elements  of  irrepres- 
sible conflicts — conflicts  in  which  all  the  tragedies  of 
history   will    finally  be    repeated    and    intensified  — 
wherein  will  finally  be  fulfilled  the  vision,  in  which 
John  saw  the  angel  with  thrusting  sickle,  and  the  great 
wine-press  with  its  sea  of  blood  flowing  even  to  the 
"horse-bridles"  of  the  armies  of  God.    This  is  as  clearly 
defined  to  the  vision  of  philosophy  as  Were  the  trage- 
dies of  the  irrepressible  conflict  between  freedom  and 
slavery  to  the  prescient  eyes  of  Seward  and  his  coad- 
jutors.    Let  the  fool  only  believe  that  republics  may 
flourish  without  God;  that  God  does  not  manifest 
Himself  in  history,  rewarding  the  nations  that  walk 
in  His  law,  and  punishing  those  that  depart  from  it. 

True,  the  hour  is  resonant  with  the  voices  of  a 
mighty  skepticism,  regal  in  power  of  research,  of  anal- 
ysis  and   of  deduction ;  proclaiming   "  No  God  but 


70  THE    BIBLE 

nature ;  "  no  revelation  but  her  silent  mountains,  her 
wide -spread  plains,  her  heaving  seas,  her  glowing 
suns ;  and  declaring  man,  the  offspring  only  of  her 
pulseless  womb — his  spiritual,  moral,  and  social  evo- 
lution the  result  simply  of  a  blind,  self-acting,  inevi- 
table law.  But  all  this  dies  in  echo  as  we  stand  by 
the  mighty  Angel  of  History,  and  see  him  write  on 
every  page  of  the  nation's  annals,  "  Lo  !  God  is  here  ; 
though  ye  see  Him  not,  yet,  behold  the  light  of  His 
presence,  the  foot -prints  of  His  passing,  the  desola- 
tions of  His  vengeance." 

And  now,  in  conclusion,  I  will  add:  if  we  would 
protect  the  integrity  of  our  institutions ;  if  we  would 
preserve  liberty  to  ourselves  and  transmit  it  to  others, 
we  must  be  loyal  to  the  Bible — that  great  obstacle  to 
the  advance  of  ecclesiastical  and  civil  despotism  — 
that  great  instrument  of  freedom  which  lies  beneath 
all  our  Bills  of  Rights,  Constitutions,  and  laws,  and 
from  which  our  entire  civil  polity  draws  its  inspira- 
tion and  power.  We  should  cherish  it  as  sacredly  as 
we  cherish  liberty  itself;  for,  without  it,  the  voice  of 
experience  and  of  philosophy  tell  us  there  can  be  no 
liberty,  no  protection  for  the  weak,  no  guarantee  of 
private  or  public  rights. 

Said  De  Bow,  in  embodying  the  civilization  of  a 
country  in  its  aristocracy:  "The  masses  are  molded 
into  soldiers  and  artisans  by  intellect,  just  as  matter 
and  the  elements  of  nature  are  made  into  telegraphs 
and  steam-engines.  If  you  educate  the  poor,  they 
soon  forget  all  that  is  necessary  in  the  common  trans- 
actions of  life.  To  make  an  aristocrat  in  the  future," 
he  says,  "  we  must  sacrifice  a  thousand  paupers.  Yet 
we  would,  by  all  means,  make  them — make  them  per- 
manent too,  by  laws  of  entail  and  primogeniture." 
This,  oh !  ye  brown-visaged,  rough-handed,  brawny 


AND  ITS  INFLUENCE. 


71 


armed  son  of  toil — patient  builder  of  the  world's  ma- 
terial  and  moral  grandeurs — is  the  social  and  political 
theory  of  the  De  Bows — those  who  would  rear,  as  did 
the  Spartan,  their  civic  and  social  pillars  upon  the 
quivering  heart  of  Labor.  But  how  quickly  does  this 
cold,  imperious,  and  barbaric  figure  shiver,  from  vital 
transitions  ;  and  then  blush,  with  warmer  blood  ;  and 
now  glow,  with  sublime  inspirations  of  equity,  when 
placed  in  the  light  of  the  Inspired  Word  —  when 
brought  beneath  the  focus  of  this  great  Beam  of  efful- 
gent essence  from  the  heart  of  the  Infinite.  The 
friends  of  civilization,  and  of  civil  and  religious  free- 
dom in  all  lands,  should  venerate  it ;  for  what  instru- 
ment or  agent  has  accomplished  so  much  for  the  ag- 
grandizement of  man  ?  Through  the  influence  of 
that  single  Bible  which  Luther  found  at  Erfurt  there 
has  been  written  a  grander  and  more  imperishable 
civil  and  social  history  than  that  of  all  the  preceding- 
ages.  The  impulses  of  that  very  Volume  are  to-day 
throbbing  and  chafing  in  the  world's  great  channels 
of  sympathy,  of  thought,  of  language,  and  of  law.  It 
pulsates  in  the  heart  of  the  steaniship,  in  the  furnace 
of  the  factory,  along  the  electric  currents  of  the  tele- 
graph, in  the  types  of  the  printing-press,  in  the  shafts 
and  galleries  of  the  mine,  in  the  battle-hymns  of  our 
poets,  in  the  prophecies  of  our  seers,  and  in  the  ora- 
tions of  our  statesmen.  It  flashed  upon  the  steel  of 
our  soldiery  along  the  Potomac,  the  James,  and  the 
Rio  Grande.  It  struck  the  fetters  from  the  limbs  of 
our  slaves,  and  is  now  giving  light,  faith,  and  con- 
science to  the  heart  of  the  master.  The  Bible  is  the 
great  hope  of  the  free  as  well  as  of  the  oppressed  in  all 
lands,  and  will  be  in  all  periods  of  the  future,  until  the 
fullness  of  time  is  complete,  and  the  great  dial-finger  of 
the  ao^es  shall  cease  its  revolutions  forever  and  foreven 

^N'lVERSITY 


